Butterfly Genjutsu
by Erisah Mae
Summary: Or, "Can Kunai go Snicker-Snack"? Alice was trying to visit Caterpillar at the Oriental Grove, but somehow got a little side-tracked and ended up in the Forest of Death... Konoha aren't going to know what hit them. Also known as that fic where Erisah went a bit mad. No Pairings.
1. Chapter 1: An Unsettling Encounter

Disclaimer: I own exactly zip of anything recognisable in this fic.

_A/N: To new readers and old readers re-reading because they want to remember (Welcome and Welcome Back!), this is not the original chapter 1. I've done a bit of tweaking for readability. Main plot points however are all the same, just a few details have been shifted around for style. Hope you all enjoy :D  
_

Chapter One: An Unsettling Encounter

When the woman appeared, there was something about her that immediately put the shinobi at the gate, Izumo and Kotetsu, immediately on their guard. It could have been the normal ninja paranoia, and the fact that neither of them recognised her as a Konoha native.

It could have been the fact that neither of them had seen her approaching from a kilometer away up the road. They had both been watching, but then suddenly there she had been, standing not ten metres from the gate. It shouldn't be possible for a civilian to sneak up on them like that, and few shinobi managed it either.

But really, long experience as a ninja had taught both of them to recognise exactly what those stains on her white pinafore were that distracted from the bizarre symbols upon it.

Blood. Somehow, none of it marred her perfectly pressed blue dress that flared out just below her knees above strange closed-toe black boots that had silver buckles all the way up to just below her knee. She didn't look older than 17, and held her hands demurely at her sides. Neither of the gate guards relaxed for an instant.

"State your name and business," Izumo said in a calm tone that belied his nerves. It didn't matter how young she looked- he'd seen what prodigies like Kakashi and Itachi could do.

The woman looked up at him with wide, green, fathomless eyes, and smiled politely. He felt a slight shiver run down his spine.

"My name is Alice Liddell. My business is not yours." She said in a faintly accented voice. He had no idea what that accent might be. Unusual.

"What village are you from?" Kotetsu demanded.

Alice cocked her head gently, and looked at him unblinkingly. "No village at all. You are both very rude. I told you my name, and yet you did not give me yours. And why should you care where I am from? Don't you know? This is Wonderland, is it not?"

Kotetsu and Izumo looked at each other in confusion. Wonderland?

"Uhhh, no, this is Konohagakure, the Village Hidden In the Leaves," Izumo informed her.

"Hidden Village?" Alice sounded mildly intrigued, in about the same fashion that one might be mildly intrigued about a specimen of sea urchin. "It seems rather obvious to me."

"Well once you've found a thing, I suppose it would be quite obvious where it is," came a laconic voice from the shadows.

"Chesire?" Alice blinked, looking as a tall ninja with scruffy silver hair that stood practically on end above his mask and the odd silver-plate that had been pulled over one eye. "No wait, I apologise, I have no idea why I thought you might be him."

The single visible eye crinkled in a way that Alice supposed meant the man was smiling.

"Why, am I better-looking than him?" Kakashi asked her in a tone that sounded suspiciously flirtacious.

Alice looked at him blankly. "He's a cat."

"A cat summon?" Kakashi was not sure he had ever heard of a contract with cats before.

Alice sneered at him derisively. "Cats don't come when you summon. They turn up when it suits them to make cryptic statements or not at all."

Kakashi looked over at Izumo and Kotetsu and saw that they looked as bewildered as he felt. Still, both of them relaxed just a little. Not only did they have back up from one of the strongest Jounin of the village, but this Alice seemed to be content to banter.

Kakashi shrugged. "Suppose I wouldn't know, I'm a dog person myself."

Alice looked him up and down, from the tips of his wild silver hair to his toes poking out of his shinobi sandals. "Is that why you wear the mask then, to hide your canine features? Do you have a tail?" she asked him in what appeared to be perfect seriousness.

Kakashi just stared at her.

Izumo and Kotetsu burst out laughing.

Alice rounded on them, he corners of her full lips pulled down in displeasure. "It is unkind to laugh at other people's misfortune. Small wonder he wears a mask with such small-minded attitudes surrounding him."

Izumo and Kotetsu were practically falling down now, their only support each other as they gasped out their amusement.

Alice folded her arms. "You have the manners of a pair of hyenas. Shame on you both."

With the air of a man wondering how in hell he has gotten into this conversation, Kakashi interjected.

"I'm not part-dog. I meant that I hold the contract to summon nindogs," he said.

Alice observed him closely. Kakashi wondered if this was what Aburame bugs underneath microscopes felt like.

"You do seem human enough," she conceded, sounding almost disappointed. "Does this mean I am back in the real world then? I was on my way to visit Caterpillar- although I suppose I should call him Butterfly now- and I slipped down a rabbit-hole. Or something. I'm not quite sure what happened. One minute I was fighting samurai wasps on the side of a mountain, and the next it was giant spiders in the middle of thick forest." She paused. "Actually, come to think of it, those spiders were far too big. And the way you are all dressed tells me I am nowhere near London." Unexpectedly, she smiled in fey delight.

A sudden suspicion seized Kakashi then.

"Where precisely were you fighting the spiders?" he asked her.

Alice turned and pointed. "A bit of a ways in that direction. Took me the better part of four days to reach this gate."

Kotetsu's jaw dropped. "You mean you were in the Forest of Death?"

Alice's brow crinkled slightly. "That's a rather morbid name, and considering the last two places I lived were the Asylum and a Home for Wayward Youth that was run by a corrupt psychologist who liked to hypnotise children into forgetting their pasts so he could sell them to pedophiles, I know morbid."

Izumo and Kotetsu stared at her speechless, but Kakashi had been in ANBU, and so had heard of such things before.

"Did you assassinate him?" Kakashi asked her bluntly.

Alice raised an eyebrow at him. "Kings, Queens and politicians are assassinated. Bumby might have had delusions of grandeur, but under his assumed Society plumage he was no more than a common rogue. I confronted Bumby over him murdering my family because my sister refused him. He killed her and then burned my house down with my family inside. I was the only one to escape, apart from my cat Dinah who showed me the way out. He admitted his crimes, and then told me no one would believe me, because they all know I'm mad." Her smile became sinister. "He didn't count on me pushing him in front of the train."

'Train?' Kakashi thought. So she must have been in the Land of Snow... or Spring, as it was now called. He had not heard of anywhere else that might have a railway. She didn't look particularly like a ninja, in fact, she looked rather fragile, and he couldn't see any weapons on her, but looks could be quite deceiving.

Look underneath the underneath.

After all, if it wasn't an empty boast, she had claimed to have been fighting samurai and giant spiders in the Forest of Death. That meant that she must have some sort of fighting skills.

"So you just came here by accident then?" Kakashi asked her, not sure he would believe her answer.

A light breeze ruffled Alice's dark hair as she looked up at him through stern child-like eyes. "There is no such thing as an accident," she said firmly, "although I must say that I did not intend to come here."

Kakashi decided that Ibiki would be able to get some semblance of truth from her. There was no way he was letting an unknown woman, let alone one this strange, anywhere near the inside of his village without her being checked over by professionals.

"I'll take her," he said to Izumo and Kotetsu, and then took Alice by the elbow and disappeared in a swirl of leaves.

Izumo and Kotetsu exchanged glances, and then shrugged. They both knew Kakashi was ex-ANBU. If anyone knew where T&I was located, it would be him.


	2. Chapter 2: Asking the Wrong Questions

Chapter 2: Asking the Wrong Questions

When Kakashi reached one of the cells under the T&I building with his shunshin, he was surprised when Alice suddenly became a mass of blue butterflies that whirled away from him and then reconstructed themselves into the figure of Alice, who stood back with a rather large knife that she had seemingly pulled from thin air. She held it defensively in front of her, and watched him warily.

Kakashi, having seen such tricks before was unperturbed by the suddenness of the knife's appearance, though he was mildly interested that it had a shape that spoke more of a kitchen knife than a kunai.

He was much more interested in what she had done to get to the position she was currently in.

"Butterflies?" He asked calmly, half out of genuine interest, and half to throw her off balance. "Is it a genjutsu?"

Alice didn't lower her knife, but mostly just seemed confused and wary, rather than moments from attack.

"What is a genjutsu?"

"An illusion technique that affects the senses," he rattled off the old Academy answer automatically, and without inflection but inside he wondered. How could she not have heard of genjutsu from wherever she received her training? Or was she playing dumb? What was her angle? Act crazy until her every action was written off as being some sort of mad response without reason? But that called attention to her, attention that any spy would seek to avoid. But then it could be a double bluff, and in fact the real intention was to catch attention so that she was consisdered to be not a threat, and then she would do apparently random things that would somehow fit an elaborate pattern that would eventually allow her to take over the village...

Kakashi inwardly winced. Sometimes looking underneath the underneath was almost more trouble than it was worth.

Alice seemed amused for some reason. Did she know what he was thinking? "Now I know this can't be the real world. Usually my hallucinations aren't catching."

Alright, now _that_ was a weird statement to make.

She waved her knife, and it left behind a blue trail in the air. "Then again, I generally can't access my Vorpal blade in the real world either."

"Vorpal blade?" Kakashi asked her. The name sounded bizarre to him. He unsure he wanted to ask what she meant by the "real world". Did this mean that Wonderland was not real?

Was this what she meant by being mad?

"It goes snicker-snack," Alice replied, deadpan. Kakashi noted from the slight glint in her eye that it was some sort of private joke. "I don't normally pick fights with humans if I can avoid it, but if you come any closer, I might forget."

It was at this point that the interrogator on duty, Aburame Mushimaru if Kakashi was not mistaken, shushinned in, a whirl of leaves preceding him by milliseconds. Which was perhaps fortunate, because Kakashi was unsure as to whether or not Alice's last comment had been a threat.

Alice looked interested. "Leaves? Oh, so _that's_ how we got here," she said, gesturing with the knife between herself and Kakashi. "I didn't know you could pull people along when you turned intangible, how curious."

The Aburame raised a thin eyebrow above his dark glasses. Kakashi, who had worked with Aburame before knew that he wanted an explanation.

Kakashi decided to oblige him.

"She says her name is Alice Liddell. She just turned up in front of the gates, by way of the Forest of Death, from what she says." Meanwhile, he signed to him, "Skill level unknown. Village unknown. Purpose unknown. Maybe dangerous. Possibly delusional."

The Aburame regarded Alice, who regarded him right back, with eerily unblinking concentration.

Kakashi generally prided himself on his skill at reading people, but right then the two figures before him might as well have been stone blocks for all the emotion they displayed.

"Greetings," he said, bowing politely. "You can call me Aburame."

Alice bowed politely back, her Vorpal blade vanishing from sight. Suddenly, she was in some sort of kimono, with flower patterned black silk.

"Greetings to you also, sir," she replied. "You may call me Alice."

Kakashi stared at her. Was that a genjutsu as well? If so, it was not exactly harmful looking, but that in itself was enough to put him on his guard. He considered looking through his Sharingan eye to test it, but decided against it. It might be an important thing to have in reserve should Alice turn out to be hostile.

It would not be the first time that something of the sort had happened.

"If you would just come through here," Aburame said, opening a previously hidden door, "I would be much obliged. I would like to ask you a few questions."

To Kakashi's surprise, Alice did just that.

He took up a position by the door, and the Aburame gestured for her to sit down at the plain wooden table in the cold, windowless room.

She sat straight-backed down on a chair on one side of the table, and waited for the Aburame to sit, before she asked, "I know it is a little rude to ask, but I don't suppose I could have some tea? I am absolutely famished. The last thing I ate was some mushrooms from the forest."

The Aburame's eyebrows shot upward. "What sort of mushrooms?" he asked her. If she had indeed come from the Forest of Death, then it was unlikely that whatever fungus she had ingested had been safe for human consumption. To his knowledge there were only fifteen species that failed to kill a person within minutes, with nine of those being hallucinogenic and of the remaining six, only three did not require some sort of antidote to be administered to prevent eventual organ failure.

Alice shrugged. "Not anything I recognised, but I haven't been feeling ill, so they can't have done me too much harm. Then again, I never met a mushroom that disagreed with me after I tried some of Caterpillar's Toadstool. They sometimes make me feel rather large or small, but they don't disagree. I wonder if this means that they're like yes-men," Alice pondered.

The Aburame's brows returned to a relaxed position. Kakashi wondered if that meant he too thought Alice had revealed some sort of acquired immunity to the poisons from fungi.

The Aburame let out a few of his bugs in a light swarm, and a few minutes later, a non-descript chunin in uniform brought a tea-service that included a few sticks of dango. The Aburame poured the tea as his bugs returned to their place within him.

Alice watched all of this with undisguised fascination. "Where did the insects come from? Do they live inside you?" she asked him as she took her tea from him.

"Yes. The ninja of the Aburame clan all have kikai within them." Such information was hardly difficult to come by, so the Aburame felt no compunction in releasing it. If the Aburame ninja had in any way desired to hide the fact that they all contained the kikai, then they would have not all dressed practically in uniform- sunglasses and white high-collared jackets or tunics in monochrome colours made the Aburames at least as distinctive as the Inuzuka with their furs, facial tattoos and canine companions. Though the bug-derived jutsu tended to be somewhat stealthier than many flashy ninjutsu, every once in a while an Aburame made it into the bingo books of the other nations.

Kakashi privately thought that this might have something to do with the occasional rumours that there were kikai bugs that ate flesh as well as chakra. He had never confirmed this as more than a rumour with any Aburame. He suffered from chakra exhaustion on a regular enough basis without pissing off an entire clan with chakra-eating techniques.

To Kakashi's surprise, Alice seemed neither disgusted nor perturbed by the announcement that Aburame had bugs under his skin, and she did not act as though she had heard of such a thing before. The latter was extremely rare. "That sounds rather uncomfortable," she commented conversationally. "Although if sending the... kikai was it? as messengers to get tea is any indication, at the very least they must be rather useful. I suppose you must have to be rather wary of spiders in your home, otherwise your tenants would get eaten."

Kakashi and the Aburame both stiffened. Was that a threat?

Alice sipped at her tea, completely unconcerned by the sudden tension in the room. "Oh, this is a marvellous blend. I really must ask where you get it. This is quite delicious." She reached for one of the dango sticks. "Since you didn't give me a fork, you will have to forgive my fingers. I truly am quite hungry, but even though they say I am mad, I do my best to at least show some manners," she said, delicately eating the sweet dumplings.

Kakashi wasn't sure quite what to make of her. She seemed perfectly happy to be consuming tea and dumplings that had been made outside of her sight, so she didn't appear to be afraid of poison. Either she was immune, or she didn't think to be paranoid, a quite un-ninja-like trait.

After she had polished off three of the dumplings, Alice looked up at the Aburame. "Are you not having any Mr. Aburame? Surely your kikai at least would like some of the dumplings. The few times I have been on picnics I've had to protect the food from insects, especially the sweet things, so I imagine they would enjoy these," she said.

The Aburame considered her solemnly, and then let a few of his beetles exit his sleeves. They fell upon one of the sticks of dango, and shortly, only the stick itself was left behind.

Again, Alice watched with undisguised fascination. To Kakashi's surprise, she clapped her hands.

"Goodness, what a disappearing trick! If I were to tell the children from the orphanage about _this_ they never would have believed me. Though they didn't really believe me when I told them about Wonderland. Little brats." Alice suddenly sounded bitter. "They used to say the most awful things to me. Bumby must have told them to. Still," Alice brightened, "I told the new woman they put in charge that if she didn't treat those kids right I'd come back and do worse to her than I did to Bumby." She grinned savagely, and Kakashi momentarily wondered if Alice was somehow related to Anko. "She believed me. Threatened to call the police though, so I decided to go back to Wonderland. I'd rather gaol over the Asylum again, but even that wouldn't be all that much fun to visit for a long time."

Her brow crinkled minutely. "Except this doesn't _feel_ like Wonderland. There's no edge of hysteria. Mr. Aburame it seems clear to me that you're not a normal human being, and it seems that others here can melt away into leaves like I do with the butterflies, but there aren't any gaps! No gaping chasms, no card people, a distinct lack of randomly placed teeth and violets... and everyone at least appears humanoid. Even Hatter is more machine than human nowadays. This is all really quite curious."

Kakashi watched as the Aburame considered her words with characteristic solemnity, and then decided to move on to another line of questioning.

Under the table he signed to Kakashi, "Delusional? Or Speaking in Code?"

"So, why did you come to Konoha?" the Aburame asked her.

Alice seemed unperturbed by the change in subject. "I am not sure yet," she responded. "I rarely end up in places I expect to, however, I always discover a purpose once I am there."

So either she was hiding something, or she was a drifting wanderer. Which didn't seem to make any sense, because if she were the latter, then she would have to have heard about Konoha before.

"Where were you before you came here?" the Aburame asked her.

"The Oriental Grove. Before that, London, I suppose. I managed to skip Hatter's Realm, which was quite a relief, I can tell you. Rather unpleasant place, that, although the factory does produce a rather good tea. Not as good as this one mind. I think it must be because of the workers. I hear that you don't have to be mad to work at Hatter's Tea Factory, but it helps."

She said this with a slight glint in her eye, as though she were sharing a joke, but neither Kakashi nor the Aburame recognised her reference.

"I wonder," she said in a thoughtful tone, "what he ever ended doing about the March Hare and the Dormouse. They had rebelled, you know, and taken poor Hatter apart. I ended up getting him all back together again, so I suppose that he was not like Humpty Dumpty..." she trailed off.

Kakashi exchanged glances with the Aburame. What in the name of Kami...? Was she a medic nin? But she had said that the Hatter was mostly mechanical. Was he a puppeteer who had himself become a puppet like Sasori? But neither of them had ever heard of such a nin. Either Jiraiya's network had had a critical slip-up, or Alice was telling them lies, or...

Something else. Something strange. She kept making bizarre references that neither of them understood. Could this be some kind of code, or was Alice some sort of madwoman?

After a slight pause that Alice seemed to have no intention of breaking as she sipped contently at her tea, the Aburame cleared his throat.

"What do you intend to do while you are here in Konoha?" the Aburame asked her.

Alice shrugged. "I have no firm notion yet. Whatever needs to be done. I will find something. Maybe I'll tell stories to children. I liked telling stories. Trick is to scare them just enough that they find it exciting, but not too much, or they'll be wetting the beds with nightmares for weeks." She said this last in a light, almost cheerful tone, and Kakashi got the sinking feeling that this woman was speaking from experience. It was beginning to seem quite obvious that as she claimed, she was indeed mad. Her swiftness to pull that blade from nowhere suggested that she was dangerous too. However, she did not appear to have any ill-will towards Konoha. In fact, if she were to be believed, before today she had not even heard of the place.

Which in and of itself was an extremely strange thing.

Kakashi was beginning to notice that this seemed to be the trend with Alice.

"So, you tell stories," the Aburame stated. "What other skills do you have?"

Alice cocked her head and considered for a moment. "Not a lot really. I was in the Asylum for ten years, and skills weren't really a thing that they tended to foster there. I can cook clean and sew enough to get by, but I am long out of practice, and I only remember a few things my mother taught me. I am not unskilled at finding things. Most recently, it was teeth and bottles and memories, but I'm sure if pressed I could find other things as well." She paused for a moment. "I suppose my only other skills lie in the martial arts. No doubt you would find me rather unladylike for saying so, but I seem to do quite well in dealing with multiple foes when I use my Vorpal Blade. Or of course the Pepper Grinder or the Hobby Horse or the Teapot Cannon."

Kakashi looked at the Aburame, and was amused to see that the habitually blank expression had become even blanker. He had never heard of those weapons either. He wondered whether Hasuwada* the weapons smith would recognise the names. Perhaps he would ask him later.

"So you have never belonged to a Hidden Village?" the Aburame asked her.

Alice shook her head, taking another sip of her tea. "I'm not entirely sure what you lot mean by Hidden Villages. I was born and raised in England in case you wanted to know. My childhood home was a nice two-storey house with a large garden, but for the last eleven years I've been in London. Filthy grey place. I have no wish to go back."

The Aburame made a sign under the table to Kakashi. Kakashi inclined his head in agreement. It was time to bring in a Yamanaka. If her story checked out, (which seemed impossible, but then, neither of them had yet detected a lie,) then the next visit would be the Hokage.

The Aburame nodded to Alice, who seemed to have noticed the exchange.

She folded her arms in front of her.

"It's impolite to speak about a person as though she is not there," Alice chided them.

"Apologies," the Aburame said simply. "I was merely asking Hatake-san's opinion on whether now would be a good time for you to meet one of our Yamanaka colleagues."

"Oh?" asked Alice. "And who might these Yamanaka be?"

"They have skills in the mind arts," Kakashi informed her from his post by the door.

Alice stiffened. "I have had more than enough of psychologists. Enough to last me a lifetime," she gritted out, her knuckles turning white as she gripped her own arms. "I might be mad, but I am yet to meet a psychologist whose therapy has actually done me any good. If anything, they tend to make me more insane. I have had more than enough of 'cures'." She was close to hyperventilating.

"You need not feel anxiety about _this_ Yamanaka attempting to cure you of anything," the Aburame said calmly. Alice remained tense, and Kakashi could not help but think that he would likewise have remained tense having heard the Aburame's emphasis. Privately Kakashi wondered if it was for the sake of clarity, or to keep a future threat "Though a few of the clan are more oriented towards the healing arts, Yamanaka are best known for their abilities to enter people's minds."

For the first time since Kakashi had seen her, Alice's composure slipped entirely as she shot out of her chair.

"Wh-what?" she looked entirely flabberghasted, and Kakashi could smell a little fear sweat. "You mean that literally, you want this Yamanaka to _enter_ my mind? Enter _my_ mind?"

"It is completely painless," Kakashi intoned. What on earth had been done to this woman in the 'Asylum' that she was so fearful of people going near her mind? Was it merely an expression of her madness? Post traumatic stress? Or something else entirely?

Alice looked at him suspiciously. "How would you know? Have either of you had a Yamanaka in your head?"

"Yes," replied the Aburame simply. "This is merely protocol to ensure that you are who you say you are."

Alice suddenly smiled eerily. "But I could be anybody. For all I know, I've been changed in the night. Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, now _that's_ the great puzzle!" Once again Alice seemed to be in on some private joke** and Kakashi was starting to feel more than a little unnerved. This feeling only increased when Alice seemed to suddenly snap back into clarity again.

She looked from one to the other of the ninja, wide-eyed.

"With respect sirs, I really, _really_ do not think this is a good idea." She laughed, but it was certainly not a happy sound. "There are things in my head. Bad things. _She _ is still in there, tentacles and all, even though I managed to get the train out. She once swore to chop off the heads of all who trespassed, and though I have managed to enter into a truce with her, I do not think she will take kindly to this Yamanaka person intruding!" If Alice had not smelled so frightened, Kakashi might have thought she was trying to threaten them. As it was, he could not help but think that she was trying to warn them, though her words made no sense to him.

The Aburame stood slowly from his chair.

"I am afraid that it is protocol, although your objection is noted-"

He was cut off, " And I, Yamanaka Tsubaki have been within some of the foulest minds that the Nations can offer." A tall blonde woman with her hair tied back in a ponytail, clothed in a purple kimono had entered the room. "However," she conceded to the wary-looking Alice, "I will as always exercise the utmost of caution."

"Yamanaka-san." The Aburame bowed to her. "This is Alice Liddell."

"Hello Alice," the Yamanaka said. In a not unkind tone, she asked Alice to sit back down.

Alice sat, but she watched the Yamanaka with an expression Kakashi had seen on cornered animals.

"You may have seen foul minds before," said Alice,with an uncertain-sounding giggle, "but I doubt you've seen anything like mine. Very well. I warn you though, avoid anything that looks red and tentacled. Oh, and if that grinning Cat is in there, be careful of his advice- it's always cryptic, and only sometimes helpful."

The Yamanaka nodded solemnly, and to Kakashi's surprise, she seemed to be taking Alice's suggestions to heart. Then again, he supposed, if Alice was mad as she said she was, and more to the point, if she was telling the truth about some of her delusions, then the Yamanaka really should be wary.

Sitting down on the Aburame's vacated chair, the Yamanaka requested for Alice to relax. She then placed a manicured hand against Alice's forehead, made a sign, and then her body went slack.

Kakashi felt no worry, as he had seen this scene many times before when Yamanakas interrogated people. Considering that very few ninja made it through the ranks without cracking up in one way or another, he was not particularly perturbed by Alice's claims to madness. He had seen the Yamanaka come out of a few minds looking like she definitely needed a shower to wash the grime off, but even then her composure had always stayed firm.

It was not until the screaming started that he started to get an extremely bad feeling about this.

*_Hasuwada is the owner of the weapons shop in Mouse of Konoha, a completely rad fic, in case you guys were wondering. It's in my favs somewhere if anyone wants to check it out._

_**If this section sounds familiar, it's because I adapted it straight from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, with a few small changes for style. _

_In other news, wow, so I take it you guys want more then? Totally doable. I'm having fun writing this. Thank you all who have reviewed! It's always nice to hear some constructive criticism. Next episode: Remember what the Dormouse said._


	3. 3: Remember What the Dormouse Said

Chapter 3: Remember What the Dormouse Said

The Yamanaka had not been inside Alice's head for more than a few seconds before Alice's mouth opened and an ear-splitting banshee scream came out.

Kakashi had a kunai in each hand and had one against Alice's neck before he was conscious of the fact.

To his surprise, Alice's eyes snapped open.

"I wouldn't advise that," she said.

Kakashi slowly removed the kunai.

"Yamanaka?" he asked her.

"Yamanaka isn't here right now," said Alice. "She's in Wonderland. She's doing quite well though. I think she'll pull through. Almost definitely." She winced suddenly. "As long as she doesn't do that again. That was unpleasant. I warned her."

The Aburame stepped forward. "Who screamed?" he asked in a quiet voice. His fists were clenched. In a distant part of his mind, Kakashi noted that that was about the equivalent of any other ninja slamming their fist on the table and demanding answers.

Interesting. Apparently Mushimaru liked Tsubaki. He would have to remember to tease him about it later, assuming she got out of this alright.

"Both of us," said Alice in a light tone. "She tried to flare her chakra. Something about disrupting what she thought was a harmful genjutsu on me. It was... not enjoyable. For either of us. Felt like she was trying to boil my head from the inside. _She _did not approve, and I had to take a drastic measure. According to the Yamanaka what I just did was impossible, and..." Alice grinned weakly, "I quote, gave her one of the most unsettling sensations she has ever felt. Now, now, Yamanaka, that isn't very polite. I'm fortunate that she has no real bodily functions in there, otherwise my skull would be quite full of vomit right now. Apparently most of the minds she's visited haven't been quite as... disturbed as mine. She really did not enjoy the tentacles or the Insane Children, and she got a better look at the flesh maiden dress than I think she wanted to. It's not my fault, I needed to switch to hysteria for a moment to get her out of the fix she had landed in, and I didn't have the time to faff about waiting for the Queen to steal my roses of health. Besides, since I've stopped fighting my inner demons for the most part we've been in alliance. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that they take kindly to what they consider an invasion." Alice's tone was completely matter-of-fact throughout this, and Kakashi was for the umpteen-millionth time glad he wore a mask. His poker face was no doubt shot to hell right now.

He glanced sidelong at the Aburame, but he couldn't read him any more. Damn. The fact that the Aburame had regained his control was either a good sign, or a really, really bad one. He had seen more than one enemy nin who had pushed an Aburame to cold fury.

They generally ended up in desiccated pieces.

Alice continued on. "I've managed to shunt Yamanaka towards the Looking Glass Land through a portal. It's prettier through there, and the worst one has to contend with if one is full-sized are the card guards, and most of them have folded since the last time I did some spring-cleaning through there... and I've reasoned with _her_. Yamanaka is just doing her job. She doesn't deserve the Queen of Hearts after her, so I sent her instead to the White Queen. The worst she should have to put up with there is a whole lot of running... well, that and the Queen's bizarre taste in food. She can be a little... literal when she goes about making some delicacy she has heard of. So I told Yamanaka not to accept any food, and I slipped her into the Rabbit dress, so if she gets damaged, she'll heal right up quicksmart and in a hurry." Alice's brow furrowed for a moment. "My goodness Yamanaka, do you kiss your lover with that mouth?"

The Aburame's attention, which had already been rooted on Alice suddenly sharpened tenfold. "So you are able to communicate with her?" he asked Alice.

Alice blinked at him. "Of course. She's in my head, after all. Which I guess means that this isn't Wonderland after all, because Yama- oh alright, I'll call you Tsubaki then. Fair is fair. And dark is dark for that matter, but... oh, I had a point, didn't I. I assure you both it was a sharp one. Ah yes. Did you want me to pass on a message to her?"

"Ask her what colour the camellias are blooming," the Aburame told her.

Alice was silent for a moment, then she laughed. " She said that they were tinged with pink, but they would last a while yet... Bug-circle? Your name means bug-circle?" she paused. "Oh. _Oh_. My apologies Tsubaki." She bowed her head to the Aburame. "And my apologies to you also Mushimaru-kun. That was unkind of me."

Kakashi was entertained to note that the Aburame seemed to be actually _blushing_.

Alice grinned abruptly. "Oh. Oops. So I'm not supposed to use that one on men I have just met? But you... Oh. Fair. Well... oh." As abruptly as the grin had appeared, it was wiped off, as Alice suddenly turned pale. "Why do you want to...? I see. Excuse me gentlemen. I'll have Tsubaki out in just a moment. As soon as I chase her out of my memories. Wouldn't want her to get eaten by a stray thought."

Alice's body went slack.

Kakashi turned to the Aburame. "So Tsubaki-san is alright?"

The Aburame jerked his head in agreement. "Hn. Tsubaki is strong. Her reply means that she is shaken up, but will be well. I only hope that she is correct."

Kakashi nodded. For a few moments, the two of them watched Alice breathe, slumped over in the chair.

"So," Kakashi said conversationally. "Did you understand what even half of what was coming out of that woman's mouth?"

The Aburame was silent.

Kakashi grimaced. "Me neither."

AVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVA

"I really would prefer it if you left through the portal I have provided you with," Alice told Tsubaki, who was currently dressed in a top-hat with rabbit ears and a red frock-coat with a large pocket-watch on the front. She noted that Tsubaki's blonde hair clashed a little with the deep red, but otherwise she pulled the look off. Or at least, did not look completely ridiculous in it. Now that right there was a skill.

The two of them were standing in a darkened grotto, but to one side, there was a grey path. Alice knew that path. She had walked down it only twice in her life, and she had no wish to revisit the memory of doing so.

Tsubaki folded her arms. "Not yet. This place was calling me. So part of you wishes for me to see this."

Alice scowled and folded her own arms. She was dressed in her Royal Suit dress, a black-on red medieval-inspired thing with card emblems upon it. She did like the look of this dress, but she knew it was something that she wore when she unconsciously wished to limit herself in some way or another.

She sighed.

Damn it all to hell.

"Very well."

Before them, was a monolithic brown-brick building, that stood out of the mist like a grim prison, this impression increased by the high cast-iron fence, although the gates currently stood open.

Above the heavy wooden double-doored entry, Tsubaki could see foreign words.

RUTLEDGE ASYLUM.

"What is this place?" Tsubaki asked. As this was within Alice's mind, she could feel the emotions attached. She was unsure what was worse. The devouring rage, the screaming violent hysteria, or the numbing abyssal despair.

"The Asylum." Alice's voice was empty as a ransacked tomb. "I was trapped in there for ten years. Afterwards, if they wanted me to behave, they would threaten me with it. Especially Pris. She wanted more money from me to support her drinking. Bumby was too busy trying to 'cure' me, so that he could have a catatonic madwoman to pimp out to customers looking for something a little more seasoned than what he normally provided. But he would encourage the children to taunt me about it."

Alice shuddered, and suddenly, she was dressed in what looked like a cross between a night-gown and a straight-jacket, her long hair shaved close to her skull. The dark kohl that had previously neatly outlined her green eyes was suddenly streaked down her cheeks as though she had been crying for hours. Tsubaki ruthlessly suppressed the thought that compared the black pattern it made to how one of her comrades had looked after bleeding from the eyes due to a particularly horrible poison.

"Alice?" Tsubaki was thoroughly unnerved at the sudden change in dress and demeanour. "Why were you here?"

Alice mutely turned her head to look a few metres to their right. Suddenly, a pale young girl in a blue night-gown with huge green eyes and a mess of brown hair was sitting a little inside the gates. She was clutching a worn stuffed-rabbit, and she looked about the age of an Academy student. Tsubaki looked from the silent, shaven-headed Alice to the girl and then realised that the young girl was a younger Alice.

As she watched, the girl just sat, staring blankly into the distance, when a large grey and white-striped creature materialised in front of her.

The girl blinked, and then despite how sinister-looking the creature was, smiled.

"Chesire Cat. How is Dinah?" Young Alice asked it.

The Cat (although it resembled no cat that Tsubaki had ever seen before) grinned back, with shockingly human-looking teeth that appeared to be slightly blood-stained.

"Dinah has found an old lady to sponge from, and is getting fat from all the kippers and cream she is being fed," the Cat replied in a surprisingly smooth baritone.

Tsubaki frowned. Was this a summon animal? She had never heard of anyone having a Cat contract before.

Young Alice then frowned. "This is a place for mad people. My family burned, and they don't believe me when I tell them it wasn't an accident, so they put me here, Chesire. It wasn't Dinah's fault, it wasn't!" Yamanaka was given the impression that if Child Alice had been standing, she would have stomped her foot. "She saved me! They don't believe me! I heard the nurses talking and they said I might be here for years and years and years!" Tsubaki could tell that Alice was mere moments from breaking down and crying, unshed tears threatening to overflow from her eyes so that she might match her older self's countenance.

Chesire just grinned at her. "Well I can think of worse places to grow up. This will be better for you than the orphanage. If you go there, then that Lawyer fool will steal all of your family's money, and you'll get sold to some idiot looking for a pretty young ornament. And you are far too special to be an ornament young one."

Young Alice pouted. "But I don't want to go among mad people."

The Cat's grin actually widened. "Oh, you can't help that. We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

Alice looked more than a little despondent at that last. "How do you know I'm mad?"

"You must be," the Cat said in a ruthless tone, "or you wouldn't have come here. Or to Wonderland for that matter. You don't think that normal, _boring_ little girls have an entire world in their heads, do you?"

Tsubaki could not help but find that a little cruel of him. Young Alice slumped a little, hugging her rabbit close to her chest, somehow looking even more vulnerable. She reminded Tsubaki of one of her nieces or cousins, and it was only the fact that she knew the real, conscious Alice was standing dumbly next to her as they watched this memory that stopped her from going to the child.

Alice seemed to consider the Cat's words for a moment. "And how do you know that you're mad?" she asked him, a little defiantly, Tsubaki thought.

The Cat seemed to be amused by this. "To begin with, a dog's not mad. You grant that?"

Young Alice scrunched up her brow in thought. "I suppose so..." she said, a little uncertainly.

"Well, then, you see," the Cat said in a somewhat smug tone, "a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."

Even Child Alice looked more than a little dubious at that train of thought.

"That's silly," she said in an accusatory tone.

The Cat scoffed at her. "No, that's logic."

"Silly logic," Alice insisted.

The Cat shook his head and grinned. "_Mad_ logic. But when the whole world has gone mad, and the inmates are running the Asylum, perhaps the safest place to be is right under their noses."

Young Alice, who until this time had been looking like a little spark had returned to her, suddenly slumped again.

"You're going to leave me here, aren't you Cat," she said despondently.

For the first time, the Cat's grin faded a little. "You're being lucid now, but something has gone wrong. Your Wonderland has been corrupted. I will do what I can, but in the end, it will all be up to you. Whoever killed your family did something to you to try and make you forget. If you're not careful, you are going to forget this too."

Young Alice looked up at the Cat. "But I'll remember Wonderland. If I can just remember Wonderland, then one day, I'll escape, right?"

The Cat was silent, but Young Alice seemed to take his silence as agreement, as she smiled.

"I think I'm going to have to go mad for a while, Cat," she said. "Otherwise they'll think they can manipulate me. I'll go to Wonderland, and let them think what they like."

"You're already mad, remember?" the Cat said in an almost affectionate tone. "But don't worry, it's hereditary. You were pretty much doomed from the start."

"My family weren't mad!" Alice protested.

"No, your sister was merely a shallow society girl, and your mother was practical. Your father though... well let us just say that his senses were rather _uncommon_ shall we? But I would not fret if I were you. If you weren't your father's daughter then you would not be half so interesting as you happen to be. Fortunately you have twice the talent of that old fogey, but unfortunately we're going to have to hide your lamp under a bushel to keep you safe. You're the last Liddel now, and the world is less of a place for it. If only you hadn't shone so very very brightly from the start, this might have been delayed."

"Chesire?" Alice's eyes were wide and mournful. "Was it my fault that my family died?"

Chesire looked at her, and Tsubaki shivered at the careless malevolence in the glance.

"Why do you always assume everything is about _you_?" he scoffed, before fading out of sight.

"He didn't say no," whispered Alice hoarsely, and Tsubaki jumped as she realised it was the bald, older version. Tears tracked down her face. "When I went insane, my mind latched onto that, and I would have screaming nightmares about the fire being caused by me. It did not help that more than a few people thought that I was somehow responsible for the fire. As if survivor's guilt was not enough, I also had them blaming me, asking questions. Demanding why it was that I refused to believe that it had been an accident, that my cat, Dinah, had knocked over a candle. After a while, a few of them decided that _I_ must have done it." She laughed then, a broken sound, and Tsubaki, in case she had needed any more confirmation of the fact, decided that Alice was indeed, as she said, mad.

But that was not exactly unusual. She had never met a completely sane jounin after all.

"But you did survive it," Tsubaki said.

"By the skin of my teeth," Alice retorted. "I was this close to getting lobotomised. The only reason they didn't do it was because I spent quite a lot of time catatonic, and only became 'recalcitrant' if someone asked me questions about the fire." Alice stared off into the misty distance, and thunderclouds suddenly began to roll in.

Tsubaki's blonde brows crinkled. "Lobotomised? I am unfamiliar with this term."

Alice's eyes snapped back to hers.

"What kind of psychologist..." Alice paused, biting her lip. Suddenly, she smiled. There was absolutely no humour nor happiness in that expression. It whispered 'blood'. Tsubaki had to sternly remind herself that running would do her absolutely no good. It would only show weakness, and Alice had already proved that she had an unlikely amount of control when it came to the landscapes of her mind. Anything Tsubaki attempted had to work within Alice's rules, otherwise it was completely ineffectual. For example, she had quickly discovered that whilst she could summon weapons at will, they appeared quite strange. A desire for her naginata had produced a rather tall candle snuffer. It seemed to do the job well enough on the small teacup-wearing critters that had tried to jump her a few areas ago, but it was quite disconcerting.

Attempts to use genjutsu in here, or to leave, however, were completely blocked. The way Alice acted and spoke however indicated that either Alice was amazingly good at lying to herself, or she honestly did not know how to let Tsubaki out. She seemed unwilling to allow the more sinister elements of her mind kill her, however, so Tsubaki was for the moment giving her the benefit of the doubt... However, for the first time in years, Tsubaki felt completely out of her depth. Considering that it was her that had started the jutsu, past experience and reason declared that _she _ should be in control. The fact that she was not gave Tsubaki a feeling that she never wanted to experience again.

When she got out of here, Tsubaki promised herself, she was going to demand that holiday leave she was owed from Ibiki plus an extra _month_.

Alice seemed to have come to some sort of decision.

"Do you want to know what lobotomy is?" she asked Tsubaki.

Tsubaki considered. If it was some sort of horrifying jutsu, it would be best if she learned about it, so that they could defend from it.

She nodded.

Alice was suddenly in a starched nurse-uniform, with a blood-spattered apron. Her hair had apparently grown back, as it was screwed back in a tight bun beneath the white cap. She was carrying a clipboard, and a gigantic syringe.

The world around them morphed, and then suddenly, Tsubaki found herself strapped to a chair with what looked like thick leather belts, her head in a brace that prevented her from moving it.

Across from her, was a young girl, who was restrained in the exact same way. She could not be Alice, as instead of Alice's dark brown locks, this one was blonde. In fact, she somewhat resembled her niece Ino, with her wide blue eyes.

"This is Gabrielle." Alice said, consulting her clipboard. "Say hello, Gabrielle."

"Hello," the girl said in a soft voice. Tsubaki unconsciously relaxed a little. In that way, at least, the girl did not even slightly resemble her niece. This meant that if Alice was trying to fuck with her, she had not bothered to do much homework. The features of the girl were normally-proportioned, which made Tsubaki realise that Alice had probably known this girl. Generally the denizens of Alice's mind seemed to be gross caricatures, or anthropomorphic animals. Even the Insane Children (and here Tsubaki had to suppress a shudder) had proportions that leaned closer to dwarves with hydrocephaly.

"Why are we here Gabrielle?" Alice asked the girl.

"I am here to be cured of my disobedience," the girl said. By the way she lowered her eyes, Tsubaki suspected that she would be hanging her head, were it not for the head-brace.

Alice nodded with a blank smile. "Here are the tools." She gestured with one hand, and suddenly a range of silver-shining implements were laid out on a metal tray. It looked like the sort of tools someone would use for a medical procedure. Or that Ibiki would use in interrogation.

A horrible suspicion dawned on Tsubaki.

"Here is the Doctor."

A faceless man walked in, dressed in a white lab coat. Well, Tsubaki assumed it had been white, underneath the maroon-red-brown-black gore that was splattered upon it. His gloves were clean.

Alice curtseyed to the apparition, and then turned to Tsubaki.

"Now watch."

Tsubaki watched.

Twenty-one years of being a ninja had not prepared her for this depravity.

Tsubaki began to scream.

…...

_Well wow, is all I can say. Never thought so many people would be getting into this. Guess I found a niche market :P Thank you again all who have reviewed, and favourited this thing. You're all going to be in for a wild ride, because Alice is just getting warmed up._

_Next Episode: Fire Casts No Shadow._


	4. Chapter 4: Fire Casts No Shadow

Chapter 4: Fire Casts No Shadow

Screaming again. This time, Kakashi managed to control his reflexes, but an ominous buzzing was beginning to come from the direction of the Aburame.

Suddenly, with a huge, ragged gasp, the previously limp body of Yamanaka Tsubaki arched, her grey eyes snapping open, wide and traumatised.

"Tsubaki!" Aburame Mushimaru was by her side in an instant, holding her.

Kakashi turned to see that Alice's eyes had likewise opened, and that she was sitting primly in her chair, straight-backed and blank-faced, aside from a slight twitch of her lips that may have been a smile of delight, or may have been a grimace of distaste. Kakashi found himself wondering which would be more disturbing, unable to decide either way.

Tsubaki did not seem to realise that she had tangled her hands in Mushimaru's jacket.

"That was... barbaric," she said, and her comment was obviously directed to Alice. Kakashi looked from her, to Alice, to the Aburame, and then back to the Yamanaka. He was unsure what precisely Tsubaki was referring to, but whatever it was, it had been Alice's doing. To his surprise, Tsubaki's glare at Alice was only half-hearted, and not the one he had seen before when she had found an enemy.

"I know," came Alice's calm reply. "But you wanted to understand."

Tsubaki swore under her breath. "Telling me would not have made enough impact. Your people are truly barbaric."

Alice smiled dreamily. "And yet we consider ourselves to be the very height of civilisation, and those who live in grass huts, killing only animals that attack them or that they need to eat the primitive savages. There is more irony here than in a blacksmith's foundry." Her tone was unchanged from before, when she had been sipping tea and eating dango with the Aburame. Kakashi was unsure how to interpret that.

Tsubaki seemed to come to herself then, and realised her position with the Aburame.

"Mushimaru-kun..." her voice was a half-whisper. "I will be alright." She straightened within his hold, and slowly let go of his jacket.

Recognising her unspoken request for what it was, the Aburame released her. He did not however step away.

Kakashi decided that it would be best to move this along.

"Alice, we are going to leave you here for just a moment. We will return presently," he said, and without prompting, the Aburame gave the Yamanaka a hand up in a fashion designed to hide the fact that he was half-carrying her from the room.

Alice seemed to be unperturbed by this, and simply nodded, beginning to hum a foreign-sounding song as they left through the door.

"My office," said Tsubaki tightly Kakashi nodded, despite the fact that he knew the Aburame's was slightly closer.

The Aburame said nothing, but the moment Tsubaki stumbled, he went from supporting her to practically carrying her. Kakashi heard the buzzing kikai, and decided not to comment. The few other nin that they passed on their way to Tsubaki's office did likewise. The Yamanakas had been working within T&I practically from its inception, and Tsubaki in particular was in some circles even better respected than Inoichi, as she was known to have a more subtle ability to elicit information than his. Only few Aburame had ever been involved, as their skills generally biassed them more towards hunting and tracking specialities, but the one before Aburame Mushimaru had been one of Morino Ibiki's mentors.

The few ANBU, interrogators and code-breakers who saw the grim faces on the three of them knew better than to comment.

Tsubaki placed her hand on the door so that the chakra-lock deactivated, and then the three of them were inside, the Aburame gently settling Tsubaki in her well-padded office chair, showing a level of familiarity that surprised Kakashi as he reached into the third draw of her desk and withdrawing a small box that contained head-ache tablets and soldier pills. A small suiton-jutsu, and the glass Tsubaki kept on her desk was filled with water.

Tsubaki smiled at him. "Really, Mushimaru-kun, I am fine. Stop mother-henning me."

The Aburame made a slight scoffing sound. "I am merely ensuring your return to peak efficiency, so that you will be able to report to the best of your ability," he retorted.

Tsubaki raised a blonde eyebrow. "Sure," she said in a mildly teasing tone. "If you do this for Inoichi, I might have to get jealous."

To Kakashi's amazement, the Aburame actually _spluttered_.

Sometimes Kakashi was extremely glad that he wore a mask that obscured his features. It made it easier to hide the fact that he was smirking in amusement.

"What happened?" demanded the Aburame, his gruff tone softened by the fact that he was seemingly unaware of the fact that he was stroking Tsubaki's arm.

Tsubaki grimaced, and then sat erect in her chair. "That girl is a genjutsu savant," she reported. "Either she is incredibly practiced, or it is a bloodline. Since she does not seem to be entirely aware of how she is doing what she does, I would lean towards the latter. Her self-diagnosis of madness seems to be not far from the truth. There are some _truly_ twisted things in that girl's mind. Some of it seems to have sprung spontaneously from her imagination, but quite a bit of it is due to the fact that she has had some truly horrific experiences, and quite a few of the latter are due to how people from whatever hell she escaped thought to 'treat' people with mental illness." She shuddered, and then explained some of what she had seen. Kakashi was unsurprised to see the Aburame's eyebrow rise above his clan's trademark sunglasses. Playing cards? Chessmen? Tentacles? Alice's mindscape frankly sounded quite bizarre. The mentions of the Cat were however less worrisome. Assuming the Cat was in fact some sort of summon, well, Kakashi could relate to having to deal with difficult know-it-all summons. "She tested me, to see what I would think of one of the worst of their treatments. Fortunately, I seem to have passed, because not only was what they were doing reprehensible, I could feel her anger, fear and despair." Tsubaki paused, and Kakashi was shocked to see tears drip from her eyes.

"What was it?" the Aburame asked her softly.

Tsubaki shuddered again. "They cut into a young girl's brain. Alice said that the girl had been disobedient, and so in order to 'cure' the girl's disobedience, they strapped her into a chair, cut off her hair, and then cut into her brain whilst she was still awake!" Tsubaki choked off a sob, continuing, "the screams were so horrible, and then they were suddenly cut off. The girl was still alive, but the light that had once been behind her eyes was gone entirely, and though she still breathed, and moved, it was obvious that she was not alive. They unstrapped her, and ordered her about the room, and she responded like a string-less puppet..." she trailed off, and Kakashi pretended not to notice the Aburame's knuckles turn white as he tightened his grip on the Yamanaka's hand.

"Why do you think she wanted you to see that?" Kakashi wondered aloud. "Was she trying to terrorise you, or to gain your sympathy?"

Tsubaki shook her head. "I don't think that was it at all. I think she wanted to trust me. When elements of her mind attempted to attack me, she protected me, in her own fashion." Tsubaki grimaced at the memory of being dressed in the Rabbit suit. "But she needed to be sure, and so she showed me something that easily could have happened to her, if I'm not mistaken. She showed me the thing she fears far more than death."

The Aburame frowned. "In doing so, she has revealed one of her greatest weaknesses, no?"

Tsubaki shook her head. "Perhaps, but if I had reacted in any way other than horror, then I doubt she would have let my mind go. Alice has some truly formidable defences within her mind. It's structured around a place that seems to be pure genjutsu in its construction, but when I attempted to disrupt the genjutsu and leave, I could not. I was only able to leave because she allowed me to."

The three ninja silently contemplated the possibilities that arose from that latter fact.

The Aburame was the first to break the silence. "Did she exhibit any aggression towards Konoha?"

Tsubaki shook her head. "No."

"Do you believe that she is likely to present a threat to Konoha in future?" he asked her.

"Hard to say," Tsubaki frowned. "She has an extremely strange way of looking at the world, but from what I can gather, for the most part she does not believe in pre-emptive strikes. From what I could gather, in the past she has been more likely to prove passive in a situation that many others would rail against, though she has vowed to never let things get so bad again. However," and Tsubaki's mien became particularly grim, "if anyone starts anything with her, she will finish it. She is not a believer in second chances when someone has wronged her, and is absolutely vicious when cornered. I believe that is why she killed this Bumby man, in the end."

Kakashi observed the Aburame as he deliberated.

"So," the Aburame said, "correct me on any point you feel I have misinterpreted. This Alice Liddell has an almost reflexive approach to genjutsu, perhaps bordering on some sort of bloodline. There is a distinct possibility that she holds some sort of contract with the Cats. She appears to have a respect for human life, and appears to be quite intelligent. On the other hand, she is also quite unstable, and likely to overreact if provoked. This however would seem to be a reaction congruent with most ninja who have been through a particularly traumatising event, and so would not be anything new to the village."

Kakashi raised a brow. He could see where this was going. "So you want to introduce her to the Hokage?"

The Aburame jerked a nod. "Yes. Since the Chunin Exams Incident, we are, if not desperate for more ninja to fill our ranks, at the very least not in a position that it would be advisable to turn away any who could aid in increasing our numbers." What went unsaid was that Alice was a young woman, who, even if she did not wish to conduct missions for Konoha, might potentially decide to settle down and have a family. At best, if she really _was_ in possession of a previously unheard-of bloodline...

Kakashi nodded. So long as the usual procedures were followed with introducing strange ninja into the population, (chunin that were assigned to overtly include the ninja in the community and make them feel welcome, and ANBU that were assigned to covertly watch the new ninja's every movement until such a time as they had been determined to be not suspicious,) he had a feeling that as odd as Alice seemed, she would make at the very least an interesting addition to the ranks.

At the very least, (and here he had to conceal a snigger,) she would make decent-enough eye-candy.

Tsubaki, having consumed her medicine and drunk her water, stood. "If you are going to introduce her to the Hokage, then I am coming too."

The Aburame looked at her in concern. "If you are still fatigued from your mind-dive, I am sure the Hokage..."

He was silenced by Tsubaki raising a hand.

"Not a chance." Tsubaki grinned. "I want to see what the Slug Princess makes of her. It should be an interesting gauge of her diplomacy style."

Kakashi considered. It had been less than a fortnight since Tsunade had taken the position of Godaime Hokage, and last he had heard, in between revamping the hospital, treating various special cases such as himself, Rock Lee and Sasuke who had been badly injured just before her return, she had been doing her very best to thwart her apprentice Shizune's attempts to beguile her into completing the backlog of paperwork.

Kakashi smirked. Well if that was the case, then she was going to _love_ the thirty-page contract that was standard for a new ninja joining the village!

AVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVA

"So you are the Hokage?" Alice took a delicate sip of her tea as she observed the blonde, pig-tailed woman with enormous breasts who sat across the table from her wearing a silly-looking red and white hat.

Tsunade looked the girl up and down, and could not say she was overly impressed. Sure, she would be the last person to say that one should take people on face-value, but all she could see was a frail-looking girl in her late-teens with too-big jaded green eyes in a pale face, that was only emphasized by the black kimono she was wearing.

And why in the hell was she wearing an apron? Did she fancy herself to be some sort of maid?

"Yes. I am Senju Tsunade, the Godaime Hokage." Tsunade sounded mildly irritated by the obvious question, and took a sip of the drink that was in her own cup- in her case, sake. Shizune would be furious when she found out.

Alice seemed to consider this information. "Hokage? Does that mean Fire Shadow?"

"This is the Land of Fire," Tsunade replied, with a slight frown.

"Oh." Alice replied. "But I thought this was the Village Hidden in the Leaves?"

"Yes." Tsunade was starting to wonder if this might be a prank.

"So this is the Village Hidden in the Leaves in the Land of Fire?"

Tsunade wondered if this was some sort of prank. The girl sounded deadpan enough that she was unsure whether she was trying to be funny or not. There was so far no detectable disrespect in the girl's tone, so she decided to see where this was going.

"As you are no doubt aware, yes," Tsunade replied.

A sound suspiciously like a snort came from Yamanaka Tsubaki, who was standing a few feet behind Alice, along with Aburame Mushimaru and Hatake Kakashi.

Tsunade shot a glare at the three of them, and then turned back to Alice.

Her brow was slightly crinkled. "But is that not dangerous?"

"Is what dangerous?" Tsunade growled.

"Living Hidden in Leaves in the middle of Fire."

Tsunade blinked. She had never really thought of it that way. Perhaps the girl was not a complete moron, merely ignorant. "I suppose I see your point, however, the names are of historical import only. Konoha was named for being in the middle of a forest, and the Land of Fire was named for the tendency for fire-natured shinobi to be present there."

Alice pondered upon this, but her thoughtful frown did not quite remove itself.

"What?" Tsunade asked her.

"Why are you called the Fire Shadow then?"

"Because I am the leader of the Hidden Village in the Land of Fire," Tsunade explained, with a somewhat impatient note in her voice.

"But would it not make more sense to call oneself the Leaf-Shadow?" Alice asked her. "After all, fire does not cast any shadows, so essentially, by saying you are the Fire Shadow, you are saying that you do not exist."

"If I could convince the world that I did not exist, then I would have a lot less paperwork to fill out," replied Tsunade dryly, taking a sip of her sake. She decided that Alice was in fact not a moron, and merely had a very strange sense of humour. She could cope with that. After all, having healed Rock Lee, she had just spent several days fending off a grateful Maito Gai. After that, anything else was easy. She decided however that a subject change was in order. "So, you wish to become a ninja of Konoha?"

This pronouncement was met with a mildly quizzical expression, but otherwise no answer.

Tsunade was instantly annoyed.

"What?" she snapped. "Cat got your tongue?"

Alice smiled serenely. "Oh no, of course not. I refuse to let him have it, because I doubt I would ever get it back from him."

Tsunade cocked her head at the girl. She appeared to have been unruffled by the small amount of killing intent that the Hokage had just released in her general direction. Perhaps there was something to her after all.

"So? You did not answer me. Would you like to be a ninja for the Hidden Village of Konoha?"

The quizzical expression remained. "In perfect honesty, I have no idea."

Tsunade stared at her.

"And why precisely do you have no idea?" Tsunade gritted out.

Alice folded her arms in front of her. "Well, I do not know the details, of course. Father always said only fools entered agreements in which they did not know all of the details."

Tsunade resisted the urge to hit her head against the desk. So the little bint wanted to quibble over details. Fine. Tsunade knew how to deal with details.

"Shizune!" she yelled.

A side-door opened, and her apprentice-cum-assistant-cum-nag-cum-secretary emerged.

"Yes Tsunade-hime?"

"Please fill in this woman on the standard prospective ninja contract," Tsunade said with a negligent wave of her hand.

Shizune stepped over to a filing cabinet, immediately extracted the correct paperwork, and fifteen minutes later had explained to Alice all of the terms and conditions.

Alice's brow furrowed.

"Yes, yes, well that is all well and good, but what is a ninja?"

The sound of Tsunade hitting her head against her desk startled a few roosting pigeons outside.

...

_Edit: Fixed a few minor details. Again.  
_

_Until next time,_

_Erisah.  
_


	5. Chapter 5: An Unexpected Invitation

Chapter 5: An Unexpected Invitation

Eventually, all the paperwork had been sorted. Kakashi was absolutely amazed at some of the strange requests and questions that had come from Alice during this period- even Shizune, who was quite used to working around bizarre and difficult people had seemed more than a little frazzled by the end of it. Why did it matter what colours were worn by the ANBU? What kind of person thought it perfectly normal for rabbits to wear pocket-watches? And how could someone not know what a hitai-ate was?

Alice had then been shown to the small apartment that had been part of her deal with the Hokage. Since it was possible that she had a bloodline, the standard package in fact involved a plot of land with a small house, but when she was offered this, Alice had thought the entire idea ridiculous.

"If I am to be the only one living there, then why on earth would I need so much space? I would spend all my days cleaning and tending to the garden just to keep it looking respectable. No, whilst I require lodgings, I must demand something more modest."

When the Aburame had circumspectly suggested that perhaps Alice might want the space to raise a clan, Alice had blinked at him, and then, upon realising he was serious, had nearly fallen out of her chair laughing.

Kakashi had been mildly amused to see that Tsunade had decided that this made Alice a lady after her own heart, odd ignorance and strange mannerisms aside. Yamanaka Tsubaki, on the other hand had not smiled, and had merely looked relieved. He wondered what the Yamanaka had seen in Alice's head that made her shudder ever so slightly at the very thought of Alice being near children.

He resolved to read the report later.

If he got around to it.

After all, if it was important, then he was sure he would be informed. Possibly by Iruka, who in between his job at the mission desk and his job teaching the little Academy brats always seemed to know everything about everyone. Not to mention having embarrassing childhood stories on about ten years worth of ninja now (both his peers and his students), which, considering the mortality rates amongst your average ninja was about two thirds of the active force in Konoha.

It was a well-known fact that pissing off Umino Iruka was one of the stupider things someone could do. Not just because he had an absolutely vicious temper when provoked enough, (just ask any one who had ever been his student,) but because aside from the fact that he was a pretty likeable guy, absolutely _everyone_ owed him a favour, or at least a good turn to avoid him 'letting slip' something. And if they did not, then chances were that Iruka had dirt on someone who they owed a favour to. So if you did something to upset Iruka, chances were that you pissed off a significant portion of the active ninja force of Konoha.

Not that Iruka ever actually overtly extorted anyone, Kakashi thought to himself with a smirk. He simply smiled that sweet smile with an innocent look in his eyes, and whoever he was speaking to would spontaneously remember just what the chunin had witnessed, and similarly spontaneously start divining what precisely Iruka needed at the time.

The funniest part, in Kakashi's opinion, was that Iruka did not seem to even notice. It was an ongoing debate in the ANBU lounge as to whether Iruka was the best at what he did, or completely oblivious. Kakashi had never been quite sure, and so had done his best to never do more than irritate the chunin, with the notable exception of the chunin exams debacle.

Kakashi winced to himself. If he had not had the reputation he did, he had little doubt that he would have had worse problems than his food being burnt at almost every restaurant or stall in Konoha with ninja ties.

With this in mind, Kakashi had winced when Tsunade had decreed that he and Iruka (who had wandered in with a report and thus been commandeered as the nearest chunin) were to be the ones to show Alice to her new apartment. Shizune had through some sort of mad paperwork-no-jutsu managed to produce a list of real estate that was owned by the Hokage, and Tsunade had quickly spotted the block of apartments that were just a little off the beaten track. She had seemed a little confused that only one of them was occupied, and then had read the name of the tenant and realised.

Her Hokage's expression had made Shizune take a subtle step backwards, but Tsunade had for once held her temper, and instead had looked Alice up and down with a distinctly calculating look in her eye.

Kakashi had caught the Aburame and the Yamanaka exchanging glances. He too found this an interesting development. So Tsunade was going to judge the newbie partly on her reaction to the demon vessel? That had the potential to ruffle more than a few feathers when people caught on.

Though this might mean that Kakashi himself might already be in decent standing with the Hokage just for being Naruto's jonin sensei. There had to be an upside somehow. Babysitting a Minato look-alike who had the attitude and bearing of cannon fodder had always, despite his best intentions of professional behaviour, set his teeth on edge, particularly when he sometimes did and said things in the same way that Obito had. And look what had happened to Obito. Kakashi had never stopped feeling guilt for the death of his team-mate, and being forced to spend time with his spiritual successor was something he had only relatively recently made his peace with.

Mostly because of the Kyuubi, ironically. Despite acting like cannon fodder, Naruto had proven to be made of sterner stuff than originally thought, having done what Sasuke, the Uchiha genius had failed to do- take down the Suna jinchuriki. Such a display of ability could have been attributed to Naruto simply being a jinchuriki of a higher-tailed demon than Shukaku, but Kakashi, who had carefully studied Gaara in an attempt to find something that would stop his surly student from getting himself killed in the fight with that psychopath, knew that there was a great deal more to it than that. From what he had heard about the battle, Naruto had only resorted to actually using the Kyuubi's chakra at the very end, and had only used a fraction of it. Most of the battle had been fought with clones, Gamabunta and one of the biggest henge's Kakashi had ever seen. Such a use of such basic techniques to take out an adversary that would have terrified many a hard-bitten jonin was frankly amazing, and Kakashi could not help but feel a little ashamed that for the most part, he really could not claim credit for Naruto's performance, neither in the battle with Subaku no Gaara, nor with the one between him and the Hyuuga.

And there was something else about Naruto that Kakashi was only just now coming to realise. He might be pig-headed, and he might be a ramen-obsessed moron, but he had taken aboard Kakashi's words about protecting one's teammates far more than either Sakura or Sasuke, the latter of whom, Kakashi was beginning to be forced to admit, had some serious psychological problems that were going to have to be addressed and soon before he went and did something particularly stupid. Chasing after his missing-nin genius brother when he was still a genin had not been a mark in favour of Sasuke's intelligence, or emotional stability.

Sakura on the other hand, whilst in possession of amazing chakra control, persisted in being a fangirl. Despite Sasuke's obvious disregard for her, even in regards to being a team-mate, she seemed to be _still_ harbouring the fantasy that one day Sasuke would wake up and smell the hormones, and suddenly decide that Sakura's often blatantly clingy behaviour was alluring.

Somehow Kakashi thought that Ino would fly first. In any case, whilst Sakura had so much potential, at the moment, she was squandering it, and Kakashi had no idea how to motivate her to better herself outside of letting harsh experience be her teacher. It had worked for his generation, after all- nothing like getting drafted into a war whilst your peers were still learning to read to take improving one's ninja skills seriously. In Kakashi's defence, Sakura _had_ showed some pretty drastic improvement since the chunin exams fiasco. He was almost starting to hope he might one day be proud to claim Sakura as his student. That day was not today.

But Naruto... Kakashi hated to admit that he had made the elementary mistake that he had warned his genin about, but years of being brutally honest with himself forced him to come to the realisation. He had thought acknowledging that Naruto was not the Kyuubi meant that he had looked beneath the underneath, but in retrospect, all that meant was that he had peeled back the label that the villagers had placed on him, only to encounter the orange-wearing idiot persona that Naruto projected in an attempt to seem like less of a threat.

Well it worked, Kakashi thought, with no small level of chagrin. It had been enough to convince him to disregard the achievement that Naruto had accomplished in learning the Kage Bunshin in only a few hours, and to ignore the fact that when he had been still pranking on a regular basis, he had habitually led much higher-ranked ninja on chases through the rooftops that somehow almost always ended in Naruto being caught by Iruka. Now that right there should have tipped Kakashi off, but he had allowed himself to become distracted by his memories and assumptions.

That was not something he was willing to see happen again, so he was going to have to tread more carefully in future.

Starting with this frail-looking genjutsu specialist, who in when asked what she liked, had replied "tea-parties" in an uncharacteristically child-like voice. Upon hearing this, Iruka had told her about several small tea-houses that he knew provided facilities for the tea ceremony. Alice though, had merely looked confused, and wondered aloud what could be wrong with the parlour of the apartment that they intended on showing her?

Kakashi, his interest piqued despite himself, had asked Alice what made her enjoy tea-parties.

Alice's face had lit up, and she had started talking about cakes, something called 'cucumber sandwiches', and the different attributes of Earl and Lady Grey.

Iruka had asked her what an Earl was, and Alice had replied that an Earl was sort of like a Lord, or a Duke, or a Marquis.

Eventually, with a patience that could in Kakashi's opinion belong to only a school teacher or one of Ibiki's interrogation specialists, Iruka had discovered that she meant some sort of daimyo.

What said daimyo and his wife had to do with tea though, was a mystery that was yet to be completely solved, since when Kakashi had asked her if she had often invited the Earl and Lady Grey to tea, she had replied with a giggle, "Only in the sense that the Walrus and the Carpenter invited the Oysters. Goodness gracious, and people call _me_ mad."

In any case, Alice had apparently settled in quite well into the small, drab, furnished apartment. This had only occurred after a few minor hiccups however.

The first of these was that Alice seemed to have absolutely no understanding of electricity, except as some sort of curiosity.

She had seemed a little confused about the fridge, and had jumped almost a foot when he had turned on the light, but the real give-away had been her complete fascination with the ceiling fan, which Iruka had switched on to air out the stale-smelling front room.

He had watched her watching it for a good half a minute before he had ventured, "No matter how long you watch, it's just going to keep going around and around."

Alice had turned to him with an expression of fascination still on her face. "How does it work?" she asked him.

Kakashi had looked over at Iruka, with a clear _you are the school-teacher_ expression, and fortunately, Iruka had managed to oblige. Alice had leapt upon his explanation of electricity and asked him a whole series of baffling questions, culminating in, "but what is the difference between electricity and magic?" When Iruka had laughed and said that there was no such thing, Alice had looked particularly confused.

"But then how else do you explain impossible things like a woman going inside my head, or that flying thing with the leaves that I do with the butterflies?"

Iruka had looked flummoxed for a solid three seconds, but had then entered into a highly theoretical explanation of chakra, that Kakashi had despite himself, been quite impressed with. He supposed it would be important to have such a solid theoretical basis in order to answer all the impertinent questions from the snot-nosed brats, but still, even Kakashi, who had created some of his own jutsu would not have known where to even start when Alice started asking more and more bizarre questions.

Eventually, Alice seemed to come to a conclusion, and said simply, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," before evidently considering the case to be closed, and changed the subject as to where she could go shopping for food to stock the fridge and cupboards.

"For I have no desire whatsoever to be Old Mother Hubbard," she had said, again making reference to a person that neither Kakashi nor Iruka had ever met in a manner that suggested that she expected some recognition other than blank faces.

It was just then, that a loud crash had signalled the present of the apartment block's sole other occupant.

"What was that?" Alice asked in a tone of supreme unconcern.

"Your neighbour," said Iruka with a wince as another loud crash heralded a string of fluent swear-words.

Kakashi raised an eyebrow. He was unfamiliar with some of those. That trip with Jiraiya must have increased (if not improved) Naruto's vocabulary.

Alice seemed unperturbed by the foul language, if her delighted smile was any indication.

"Oh goody, I should go up and meet him then."

Before Kakashi or Iruka could stop her, she had swept out the door, and less than a minute later, they heard her light step on the hallway above, and then her polite knock.

They heard the sudden silence from Naruto's apartment.

Iruka immediately looked concerned and went to move, but Kakashi placed his hand on Iruka's chest to stop him. He wanted to hear how this played out.

A few moments later, Alice knocked again, this time with a muttered, "Goodness, don't you know it is quite rude to keep a lady waiting at your door?"

Naruto had evidently heard that, as they heard the door open, slowly.

Inwardly, Kakashi applauded him for his paranoia, though he wondered at the apparently uncharacteristic display of it.

"Good afternoon," came Alice's breezy tone, "I am your new neighbour Alice Liddell. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mister...?"

There was a significant pause.

"Uh... Naruto. Uzumaki Naruto," Naruto sounded somewhere in between bewildered and suspicious. "But you can call me Naruto," he said a little more fluently.

"Well, you can call me Alice," Alice replied, "which is my given name, although you ninja around here seem to do things a bit backwards. It seems quite strange that some around here think they are being more formal by calling me that, and that they would be overly familiar in calling me Liddell! If someone were to call me Liddell, I'd be looking around for my father, which would be quite illogical, as my parents have been dead for a decade."

Kakashi and Iruka exchanged surprised glances. Alice was not her family name? Her insistence in calling Tsubaki by her given name suddenly made much more sense, despite the perceived rudeness. It was one thing for a kid like Naruto to insist on calling everyone by their given names, and quite another for a stranger like Alice.

Naruto however, seemed more focussed on the latter part of her speech.

"I'm sorry to hear that," he said in a sincere-sounding voice, that nonetheless sounded a little wary. "I'm an orphan too. I never knew my parents," he admitted in a somewhat subdued voice.

"Well that is evident," came Alice's reply, "because you have yet to invite me inside, which is really the height of rudeness. But, I suppose if you never knew your mother, then you would not have been taught manners." Despite the harshness of the words, Alice's mildly amused tone softened their impact. "That said," and Alice suddenly sounded even more amused, "I daresay _my_ mother would call me a hussy for being around so many eligible men unchaperoned, but in a place where they are sensible to put a woman in charge, then it seems to me that such things must be less of a problem here."

Again, Kakashi and Iruka exchanged glances. Either Alice's mother had been particularly old-fashioned, or she had been part of some sort of clan that had pretensions to minor nobility. If she was actual nobility, then they no doubt would have heard of her, as she was beyond the age of making her debut, even before they both acknowledged that neither of them had ever heard the names "Alice" or "Liddell" before today.

There had been a slight shuffling sound, before Naruto had admitted, "My place is a mess. I just broke some crockery."

"Very well then," Alice sounded a little disappointed, but otherwise mostly unruffled. "Some other time. Might I instead invite you cordially to tea on Thursday at around four in the afternoon?"

Silence.

"If you do not stop gaping like a half-wit, then I might rescind my invitation," Alice said in a cool tone.

"Wha-? I mean, uh, of course I would like to come to tea. If I don't have a mission, and if Kakashi-Sensei will let me out of training, then of course I will come!" Naruto sounded somewhere between confused, hopeful and amazed, and the sound was practically heart-breaking.

"Oh, Hatake Kakashi?" Alice asked him rhetorically, "oh I am sure we can come to some sort of arrangement. He has been so kind as to be my escort today, and he seemed to be perfectly reasonable, if a little rude. Well, I need to go down and get settled, so I think I shall leave you now. I will expect to see you on Thursday."

A few moments later, and Alice was back inside her apartment.

She looked sternly at Iruka and Kakashi. "You know, it really is quite the height of rudeness to eavesdrop. Small wonder that child has such bad manners if the two of you are his role-models."

She looked to Iruka. "I would have my stipend now, if you please. I wish to do some shopping." Iruka offered to help, but Alice shrugged him off as she somehow made the plain-looking purse disappear into thin air.

"No, though it is kind of you to offer, I will be independent. If I make a mistake or two on my first outing, then it will be on no one's head but my own. Besides," she grinned, "it will be an adventure."

She then turned to Kakashi. "You are going to let Naruto go at three o clock on Thursday so that he has enough time to wash up for tea."

Kakashi raised an eyebrow.

"You sound quite certain of this," he commented.

"Of course," said Alice. "You and Iruka are likewise invited, as are Yamanaka Tsubaki and Aburame Mushimaru. The list however may expand or contract depending on the degree of courtesy that I am shown in the next few days," she finished significantly.

Somehow, Kakashi knew that she was talking directly to him.

"Alright," he said with a barely-hidden groan. "I'll let him go. Unless some sort of emergency mission comes up, in which case-"

"-you will be honour-bound to complete said mission," finished Alice in a tone that seemed to ask Kakashi why was he saying such obvious things.

Fifteen minutes later, after Alice had managed to extract directions to the market from Iruka, Kakashi and Iruka found themselves outside.

Shrugging, Kakashi began to wander back in the general direction of the Hokage's office. He might stop for sushi or something along the way, but he would get there eventually.

Iruka fell into step with him.

"...I just got invited by a madwoman who doesn't know what chakra is to tea with two interrogators, a perverted jonin and Naruto, didn't I?" he asked in a mildly dazed voice.

Kakashi grunted. "Looks like." To quote that lazy Nara kid, the whole situation sounded troublesome.

Iruka suddenly smiled. "If you don't turn up until half-way through and leave me there to deal with that potential snafu on my own, then I'm telling the Hokage that you've been corrupting your 'cute little genin' with those dreadful Icha Icha books."

Kakashi stopped dead in the street, eye wide in shock. Judging by Tsunade's opinion of her old team-mate's literature, that was a small piece of (incorrect – he did have _some_ standards, he'd never let his cute little genin actually _see_ what he was reading) gossip that could cause... problems.

"You don't play fair," he accused Iruka, pointing at him dramatically.

Iruka shrugged and smiled innocently. "Ninja."


	6. Chapter 6: Let's have a SnickerSnack!

Chapter 6: Snicker-snack!

Naruto was not quite sure what to think about his new neighbour.

When she visited for the first time, he had immediately known that she was not one of the normal people who knocked on his door. Jiraiya and Kakashi came in through the window. Sakura would just barge in, occasionally with a sulky Sasuke standing outside. Iruka did knock, but his knock was a double soft tatat before a harder bam. The only other person to ever visit his home had been the Old Man, but he was dead now.

ANBU didn't count. Naruto knew that they occasionally came through to check on him- not him Naruto, him the Kyuubi jinchuriki. Occasionally if he thought they were being obnoxiously obvious, he would throw things at them.

Eventually they had cottoned on that he was notoriously bad at seeing through genjutsu. That meant that he rarely saw them, but he could always tell that they were there. Thanks to the Kyuubi, his nose was almost as good as an Inuzuka's and ANBU always had that smell of weapon oil, steel and old blood sticking to them.

Other than that, the only "visitors" that Naruto had ever had were the occasional knock-and-runs. Sometimes kids dared each other to go knock on the Demon's door. Sometimes it was people with a grudge, who left him exploding tags, or other unpleasant surprises.

So when he had heard the four light knocks, he had immediately been suspicious.

Upon opening the door, he had been surprised.

The only girl who had ever visited his apartment was Sakura, and Naruto knew that even she would not bother were he not her team-mate. So who on earth was this lady?

"Good afternoon," she said cheerily, as though he wasn't holding a kunai in front of him. "I am your new neighbour Alice Liddell. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mister...?"

Naruto stared at her for a moment. What? Neighbour? He'd never had a neighbour before. Something about people not wanting to live in the same building as the Demon Fox. Fleetingly, he wondered if this was a trick from Akatsuki, but he knew that the ANBU were around- he'd just thrown a bowl at one who had been sitting on his table- so he figured that he was probably okay.

Probably.

He looked at her closely, but she didn't smell like she was lying. She also seemed to honestly have absolutely no idea who he was. Well, he had never heard of anyone called Alice Liddell either, so they were even, but still, this meant that no one had warned her about him. That was not going to last, but he might as well be nice.

"Uh... Naruto. Uzumaki Naruto," he stumbled. "But you can call me Naruto," he said, when her expression did not even flicker from the polite smile.

She definitely had no idea who he was.

"You can call me Alice," she said. Naruto winced slightly. Had he offended her? But no, now she was explaining how where she came from (and where was that exactly?) people's names went given name and then family name rather than the normal way.

Weird, but okay. He was just happy that she wasn't looking at him like he was something on the bottom of her shoe.

Oh, her parents had been dead for about ten years.

Remembering that the most common cause of deaths from just over ten years ago was the Kyuubi (and how could he forget?) Naruto felt his face fall.

I'm sorry to hear that," he said. Once someone clued her in, she was almost definitely going to hate him. Still, might be worth pointing out where they were similar. Maybe she would make her own judgement about him?

"I'm an orphan too. I never knew my parents," he told her.

"Well that is evident," Naruto's eyebrows shot up. Whoa lady, harsh much?

"Because you have yet to invite me inside," she continued, "which is really the height of rudeness. But, I suppose if you never knew your mother, then you would not have been taught manners."

Is she... teasing me? Naruto wondered incredulously. He caught the glint in Alice's eyes and realised that she was. He was completely flabberghasted. He wasn't particularly upset over the gibe about his mother or his manners, because frankly, he was well aware in his deficiencies in both areas. Besides, he thought to himself, Alice is an orphan too. She no doubt knew what it was like to stumble around and make things up on the fly because something outside of one's knowledge of etiquette had suddenly sprung up.

Her next words confirmed this thought. "That said, I daresay _my_ mother would call me a hussy for being around so many eligible men unchaperoned, but in a place where they are sensible to put a woman in charge, then it seems to me that such things must be less of a problem here."

Naruto stifled a snort. People tended to keep their mouths shut about ninja, especially kunoichi if they valued their lives. Considering the "pillow" missions that some kunoichi and the occasional shinobi were contracted to run every once in a while, most people were careful about what they said about the morals of anyone with a hitai-ate. Because frankly? Sleeping with the enemy or an unsuspecting source was usually the least of a ninja's sins.

On the other hand, gossip was Konoha's lifeblood. If there was a chance of scandal, then they would seize on it like vultures on a fresh corpse. People tended to keep their mouths shut around Tsunade because they knew that if she wanted, she could punch them into somewhere next decade, heal them up, and then do it again until her fists got tired. Then she could order someone else to do it whilst she watched with sake cup in hand.

Chances were though with a new unknown woman spending time with the Demon Container? Well, there was going to be more than a little talk, and most of it wouldn't be very nice.

He saw the hint of irony in Alice's expression, and realised that even if she didn't know the whole story, she knew this too.

He shrugged, and she inclined her head in acknowledgement. People were people, and if you were unfortunate enough to be a pariah, then your best bet was to do your best to stop caring about what they thought of you.

But it wasn't as easy as that.

Alice was looking at him a little oddly...Oh.

Naruto realised then that he had yet to invite Alice in, and then winced. His apartment was completely trashed. No way was it fit for company like Alice, in her neat apron and pretty, if slightly odd, dress.

He shuffled his feet a little, and scratched the back of his head with a sheepish grin. "My place is a mess. I just broke some crockery."

To his dismay, Alice's smile dropped. Oh no, he thought, this is it, now I'm going to find out that it was all some kind of joke...

"Very well then," Alice said, folding her arms in front of her. "Some other time." Then, to Naruto's amazement, the smile returned. "Might I instead invite you cordially to tea on Thursday at around four in the afternoon?"

Naruto stared at her. She- she wanted to invite him? _Him_? To drink tea?

"If you do not stop gaping like a half-wit, then I might rescind my invitation," Alice said calmly, a slight twitch of her mouth indicating her amusement.

Naruto realised that his jaw was indeed flapping open, and he shut his mouth with a click.

"Wha-? I mean, uh, of course I would like to come to tea," he stumbled. Then he remembered that this might not be allowed. "If I don't have a mission, and if Kakashi-Sensei will let me out of training, then of course I will come!"

"Oh, Hatake Kakashi?" Alice seemed to be even more amused by this, "oh I am sure we can come to some sort of arrangement," she said airily. Naruto looked at her in confusion. Did she know Kakashi? "He has been so kind as to be my escort today, and he seemed to be perfectly reasonable, if a little rude." She pointed downwards, and cupped her hand to her ear in illustration. Naruto grinned. So Kakashi was eavesdropping, and Alice had rumbled him? That was pretty funny, actually. He would have to remember to tease his sensei about it later.

"Well, I need to go down and get settled, so I think I shall leave you now. I will expect to see you on Thursday," she concluded with a smile.

Naruto just nodded dumbly as she walked away, her skirt twitching a little from side to side as she walked. He was surprised to see that there was an oni mask attached to the back of her sash, and that even though she wore heavy-looking boots that buckled up to her knees, her steps were quite light.

And then she turned the corner, and she was gone.

Naruto stared after her for a few moments, and then shook his head, to clear it. It was Sunday today, and he had to do his shopping for the week. But first...

He looked at his flat, and winced. Time to clean. Next time his pretty neighbour showed up, he wanted to at least have the place acceptable enough to invite her in for a glass of water or something...

He concentrated for a moment, and five clones popped into existence.

"Right men, you know what to do, dattebayo!"

"Hai!"

AVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVA

Half an hour later found Naruto wandering through the market under a light henge. Most ninja would detect it immediately, but it was likewise beyond the abilities of most civilians. So long as he was careful to avoid any ex-ninja or Academy drop-outs or shinobi children of civilian parents who might be minding the stalls, he should be fine. It had worked fine before. Usually. He hefted his basket, which was already full of rice, and was about to look over some greens when he heard a ruckus over near a stall that he remembered sold tea.

"What kind of a tea merchant doesn't know what Earl Grey is?"

Naruto's eyes widened. Was that...?

He rounded the corner, and he could see Alice, standing with her arms folded, looking particularly unimpressed with the sour old man who tended to chase Naruto off if he ever saw him without a henge.

"Well if you tell me what is in it, then maybe I can make you the blend. It will cost you extra though," the tea merchant said.

Alice sniffed, clearly unimpressed. "Do you have black tea leaves?"

"Of course."

"Bergamot oranges?"

"Oranges?" the tea merchant looked completely confused.

Naruto's ears perked up. He quite liked orange. He wasn't sure what shade Bergamot was, but he was was particularly interested to see what it had to do with tea.

Alice scowled. "What kind of barbarians are you? Oranges. Citrus fruits. The oil from the rinds of bergamot oranges can be mixed with black tea leaves and jasmine to make Earl Grey tea, a blend that is said to have come from the Chinese Emperor himself."

The tea merchant's brow crinkled in confusion. "The who?"

Naruto took one look at the expression on Alice's face, and decided that whilst he disliked the tea merchant, he didn't want him dead.

"Alice-san!" he crowed, looping an arm around her shoulders. "I have not yet shown you the delights of Ramen!"

Alice burst into butterflies, and appeared two feet to the left. She looked momentarily bewildered, before she suddenly cocked her head in interest.

"Oh, it's you. Greetings neighbour. I think I like your other colours better."

The Anbu watching the scene from their hiding places looked at each other. One who happened to be wearing a Sparrow mask gestured to one in a Centipede one. "Add 'can see through henge' to the list."

"You sure?" Centipede signed back. "He _was_ kinda obvious, what with the ramen reference and all."

Racoon, who had been watching the exchange, shoved Centipede in the arm to get her attention.

"Pay attention," he signed. "Naruto has yet to say a single thing about ramen to her. Don't assume. Looking stupid is not the worst thing that could happen to you."

Centipede bowed to acknowledge her superior, before pulling a notepad seemingly from nowhere and scribbling down the latest apparent ability that Alice had displayed. So far, quite a bit of it was marred with question marks. This irritated Centipede, as she liked things to fit together, and to be completely certain.

Racoon, who was aware of this tendency of Centipede's, wondered if this meant that Centipede's choice to become a ninja was a sign of masochism.

"Ramen?" A few storeys below, Alice innocently queried her neighbour. "What's ramen?"

The look of shock on Naruto's face was absolutely priceless.

AVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVA

Just before he could whisk her away to Ichiraku's however, Kakashi materialised in a swirl of leaves.

"Hello Alice," he said. Detecting Naruto's distinctive chakra, he turned and raised his visible eyebrow when he saw the nondescript kid exuding demon chakra. He considered asking Naruto why precisely he was under a henge, and then decided that he didn't want to know.

"If the two of you could come to training-ground 25, I have someone there who would like to test your skills, Alice."

Alice shrugged. "Well I was shopping, but that can wait until later." She scowled and muttered something semi-audible about back-water tea merchants not having a decent stock.

Kakashi blinked. "Right. Well, I'll see you both there."

Fifteen minutes later, and Alice, looking particularly incongruous in her petticoats and neat pinafore was standing a few feet from where Naruto, Kakashi, and five people and a dog that Alice had never met before.

Naruto decided to do the introductions.

"So, Alice, this is my team-mate, the sexy Sakura-chan, the loud mutt is Kiba, who is Akamaru's pet, the bug guy with the sunglasses is Shino, the quiet one with the scary-awesome eyes is Hinata, and the lady is Kurenai, their jounin-sensei."

"Naruto!" the pink-haired girl he had identified as his team-mate screeched and hit him over the head. "That was so rude!"

Kakashi, who ignored the usual by-play in favour of watching Alice was interested to see her expression becoming blanker than usual.

"Sakura, is it?" Alice asked her rhetorically. "Are you aware of the saying, 'she who lives in a glass house should not throw stones?'"

Sakura blinked at what to her seemed like a non-sequitur. "No," she replied.

"Ah," said Alice simply. For a moment Kakashi thought she was going to leave it at that, as she had allowed for a significant silence, but she then continued, "well in this instance, it would be best if you took it to mean, 'she who does not approve of the manners of her team-mate should not pierce all of our ears with her banshee shrieking and then comport herself in a less than lady-like manner by visiting violence on said team-mate'." Ignoring the resultant spluttering, Alice turned to the other four people whom she had just been introduced to. "I am very pleased to meet all of you." She cocked her head. "Ah, Shino was it? I take it you are an Aburame? I had the pleasure of being introduced to Mushimaru just this morning."

Kurenai, Kiba and Hinata were interested to see Shino's eyebrows shoot up, an expression denoting emotion that would have translated to a bug-eyed gape on Naruto. Kurenai and Hinata decided to ask him about it later, Kiba to tease him.

"I am indeed an Aburame," Shino replied with a slight bow and a dull voice that exposed none of the surprise he felt at being so cheerfully greeted by someone who had no doubt been interrogated by his reputedly rather vicious cousin. "Mushimaru is the son of my father's sister."

Alice nodded cheerfully. "Tell him from me that his Camellia's absolute favourite food is hamaguri*."

Shino nodded slowly, as Alice whirled to face Kurenai.

"So I assume it is you whom will be testing my skills?" she asked her.

Kurenai nodded. "Yes. Kakashi here tells me that you have some quite impressive genjutsu, and since my team is leaving for a mission tomorrow, we decided it best that we do this now."

Alice, hands on hips, regarded the woman with a steady gaze.

"Well, honestly I only even heard of genjutsu earlier today, but if that's what you people want to call what I do, then I have no problems with it." Alice shrugged. "What do you want to see?"

Kurenai stepped forward. "I was thinking that we could have a spar. Nothing lethal, obviously, but otherwise, just do what you would if you were fighting. I'll start, if you like?"

Alice's brow creased just a little, but then she nodded. "Alright. But keep in mind that I haven't really done it like this before."

Kurenai wondered what Alice meant by that, but decided that it was unimportant for the moment. She made a few handsigns, and then Alice found herself suddenly surrounded by thick forest.

Alice smiled. "Ooh I like this. But it needs birdsong. A few seconds later, a light twittering sounded. Kurenai was curious to realise that she had never heard birds quite like that before. What surprised her though was that she was suddenly inside her own illusion, and without a visible handsign from Alice.

Alice stretched her arms and twirled around a little. Kurenai raised an eyebrow, but stood back. She had absolutely no idea what the girl was doing, but better to be safe than sorry.

Alice stopped twirling, and then smiled. "Oh that's right, I'm supposed to be fighting, aren't I? I hope you don't mind if I ask for a little help."

Kurenai had no time to reply, as a moment later, she was dodging a giant beetle that flew straight for her head. Then suddenly there were three more. She put her hands together in a dispelling seal, and called out "Kai!" but nothing happened. Kurenai frowned. This was starting to get rather uncomfortably familiar. Shades of Kurama Yakumo and Uchiha Itachi, both of whom had managed to turn her, a recognised genjutsu mistress, own genjutsu against her. Yakumo had a blood-line limit, and the Uchiha had the Mangekyo Sharingan. What did this Alice stranger have?

She jumped back again to avoid the giant beetles, and then suddenly had to dodge half-way up a tree to avoid what appeared to be a giant mushroom with teeth.

Hanging sideways from the tree, Kurenai semi-instinctively threw shuriken at the beetles that were coming back for a third pass, and was surprised to see them all fall to the ground. Huh. Since it was Alice's illusion, either Alice was humouring her, trying to make her forget this wasn't real, or Alice's genjutsu played by 'fighting chance' rules. The latter was a mental block that Kurenai had seen before in some genjutsu users, however, they usually got around said block by simply making the odds impossible, so even if the genjustuee could technically possibly "win" against the individual parts of the illusion, the sum of the parts was enough to generally be pretty deadly.

"You are rather quick at squashing those insects," Alice's voice suddenly came from her right, and Kurenai saw that her hair was blowing in a non-existent breeze as Alice suddenly looked far rosier than normal.

"Let's see what you can do with these." Suddenly, Kurenai found herself surrounded by huge six-legged monsters in demon masks, wielding katana. They all leapt impossibly high in the air, before coming down, swords ready to slash.

To hell with this! Kurenai implemented her Flower Petal Escape, and managed to disperse so that the strange masked monsters were unable to slash at her.

She then shot at Alice, a whirlwind of petals.

With an intense look of concentration upon her face, Alice pulled an oversized elaborate fan seemingly from thin air, and then blew the scattered fragments of Kurenai away from her.

Kurenai retreated to a high tree branch, recollected herself, and then threw a kunai directly at Alice.

Alice promptly burst into butterflies, and then reincorporated several feet to the left.

Both of them then paused, assessing each other. Then Kurenai smiled.

Alice cocked her head.

"I think we should end this now before it gets too nasty," said Kurenai. That last move of hers had been bordering on something she would do in a real fight, instead of what this was supposed to be, a spar. "Agreed?"

Alice seemed to consider this, and then shrugged. "You were the one who wanted to fight," was all she said. Kurenai dispelled the jutsu, and then they were both standing a few metres apart in the training-ground, the students and Kakashi displaying various degrees of surprise and interest.

"Oh was _that_ what Tsubaki was trying to do!" Alice looked enlightened. "It doesn't hurt when you Kai outside of one's head."

Kurenai considered what Alice could mean by that, but decided to ask Tsubaki later. Did she seriously not know how to dispell genjutsu? Come to think of it...

"Alice? Can you cast a genjutsu of your own? I want to see how you are at making your own raw materials."

To Kurenai's shock, Alice shook her head. "I have not the foggiest of ideas of how you people do that magic trick."

Kurenai gaped. She wasn't the only one. The spectators, somewhat forgotten until that moment, called attention to themselves with various noises of disbelief.

"You're not serious are you?" blurted out Sakura.

"I am always serious," Alice replied, deadpan.

"That is quite illogical. Why? Because we all just observed you altering Kurenai-sensei's genjutsu," Shino stated.

Alice shook her head. "Your logic is faulty then. All I control is what I perceive, and even then, that control was hard won." She wrung her hands a little. "I only learned what chakra was yesterday, and even so, I am not convinced that it's not magic. I can lucid dream quite well at all times, but I could not cast an illusion to save my own life."

Suddenly Kurenai stumbled a little in exhaustion. Strange, she was sure she normally would not have used that much. She reflexively checked her chakra levels, then checked Alice's and was astonished. "Kami, you must be using the feedback loop! I've heard of it, but only as a theory! Even Itachi was doing a weave-job! Nearly seamless in his case, but nonetheless..."

Alice looked mildly perplexed. "Apologies, but what?"

That snapped Kurenai out of her genjutsu-jargon. "Well, see, all genjutsu is created through a projection of chakra, of course, but in order to monitor what the victim is experiencing, the caster has to be able to see to a certain extent what the victim can see, in order to adapt the image to the best one for the situation. A good genjutsu artist can then produce their own competing genjutsu, and then project their reality onto the original caster, which depending on how much chakra they push into it, is bolstered by their own feed-back effect. The whole thing is called weaving. But you!" Kurenai pointed at Alice, who had crossed her arms in front of her defensively. "You bypassed the competition stage entirely and changed the genjutsu by changing what I was getting back in the feedback loop. It made me think you were using a competing genjutsu, when really, you were tapping directly into my own perception of my genjutsu! It's genius! How do you do it?"

Alice shrugged. "I make a point of believing at least six impossible things before breakfast. It's all easy when one has a world in one's head. But that's just what I can see. I'm no good at making other people see things they don't want to."

Kakashi looked particularly perturbed. "But, what about the butterflies? I've seen them, when you shunshin. What are they if they aren't genjutsu?"

Alice just shook her head. "Oh those? That's because it's on me. I've only ever been able to do it inside Wonderland before, but I've found that here has a few of the same rules. I can change my outward appearance at will, so long as I have a good reason for it. But it's easy to see through it. You just disbelieve what you are seeing." Alice paused thoughtfully, "Though that said, people here seem to be very good at believing impossible things. Must be all the magic floating around."

Kakashi blinked at her, but decided to just leave that one alone. "Right well, now that we've tested your genjutsu capabilities, I think we should assess your taijutsu. Unless you are too tired?"

Alice shook her head. "Are you sure this is a good idea? I have never sparred before..."

A rude snort sounded from a nearby tree, and Alice turned to see a young man of about the same age of the other students who were watching her.

"What kind of ninja has never sparred before?" Alice had enough time to notice that the young man had a similar complexion to herself, before to her surprise, her neighbour Naruto leapt to her defense.

"Shut up Bastard! Alice-chan is awesome, dattebayo!"

"Naruto-baka! Don't say that about Sasuke-kun!" Sakura screeched, hitting Naruto over the head.

Alice watched the tableau with mild interest, and then looked to see how the other members of the group were reacting. A complete lack of surprise, and a mixture of irritation and embarrassment could be seen across the expressions of Kurenai's team. Kakashi on the other had just looked indifferent, apart from muttering something about how he was glad Sasuke had been discharged from the hospital. Alice was appalled.

"Good grief? Are you _all_ completely without manners? Naruto's never met his parents, what are your excuses?" Alice demanded of Sasuke and Sakura.

Naruto hung his head, and scuffed at the ground with one sandal. Sakura, now being told off for the second time by Alice for lack of manners was gasping like a piranha. She was a good girl! Everyone knew that! How dare this stranger-bitch say her manners were no better than Naruto's!

"Who the fuck are you?" Sasuke demanded rudely.

Alice straightened, and then sniffed in a dignified fashion. "I am Alice Liddell. I would say you can call me Miss Liddell, but judging by your bad language in front of ladies, you are quite clearly too badly brought up to know how to act the gentleman. And for your information, until yesterday, I was never considered a ninja."

She turned her back on Sasuke in a clear show of contempt, and addressed Kakashi. "As I was saying before, before I was so _rudely_ interrupted, I have never sparred with anyone before, so I am unsure if I would be able to properly, oh, what is the vernacular? Ah yes. Pull my punches."

"Really? So no one trained you?" Kurenai asked, somewhat surprised. "You're a civilian?"

Alice shrugged, arms folded again. "I wouldn't say that no one trained me, although in truth it was less training, and more leading me astray through madness, whilst he enjoyed the ride, occasionally popping up to mock me as much as point me in the right direction with cryptic comments."

Kurenai and Kakashi exchanged glances. Actually, that sounded appallingly close to how a lot of jonin-sensei dealt with their genin. Sakura, Naruto and Sasuke, had they not been fuming at each other would have no doubt agreed.

Unfortunately Sasuke chose this moment to attempt to put the petite stranger in her place.

"Bah! A civilian with no formal training? You have no business being here. Surely you have better things to do with your time. Stop wasting ours," he snarled.

Alice looked down at him from her slightly greater height. "Quiet child, your elders are speaking. As I said Kakashi, I am unsure if it would be wise... I would hate for someone to get hurt because I am not practised at holding back.."

"Hn." The Uchiha grunt has long been an accepted form of communication within Konoha, due mostly to the fact that the citizens became resigned to the fact that, with few exceptions, an Uchiha will never say three words when they can say one, and will never say one word when they can still get their point across in a grunted syllable. They had quite a bit of money, and so such bestial modes of communication were put down to eccentricity.

Alice however, having not been brought up to revere such rudeness, even if she _had_ known Uchiha Sasuke from Adam, would have no doubt had the exact same response as she did.

"Excuse me, did you say something? I apologise, but I don't speak Wild Beast."

The ensuing battle was extremely brief.

…...

_*Hamaguri: Japanese clams, or as I thought of them when I tried them, Japanese Pippies. They are god-damned delicious, especially grilled fresh. You put them on the grill plate until they pop open by themselves, and then drip tabasco on them. Best thing ever._


	7. Snickersnack II: The Snickersnackening

Chapter 7: 

Slice with kunai-

Got the sleeve. Faster than expected, but no Lee. No Sakura for that matter. Might as well be going in slow motion with the Sharingan activated. Should be easy.

Parry the blade.

Where did that come from? Unimportant. Looks like kitchen knife. Pathetic.

Feint with elbow.

Duck the swipe.

Kick to the knee.

Butterflies!

Kawarimi with a stick, throw shuriken.

More butterflies, coming closer.

Punch to where the body is forming-

A hit!

She's down.

Up again. Good recovery time. Impressive for a civilian.

Not impressive enough.

Time to finish this.

Dodge the next slice with the-

What?

_Neeeeigh!_

Bam!

Black.

AVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVA

The assembled ninja stared at the tableau. The Uchiha Genius was sprawled on the ground, out cold, a large bruise already appearing on his brow.

"Oh dear," commented Alice, hefting her weapon on one shoulder. "I do hope I didn't hit him _too_ hard. Do you think I knocked some sense into him? Then again, I did knock him senseless, so perhaps I knocked out what little sense he had. Then again, no one with any sense would attack an unknown opponent with such brashness, so perhaps I knocked his sense into the minuses. So the question is, is sense an absolute value? If so, then his character should be improved. If not, well, I suppose I could always repeat this experiment. I shall have to observe, and form a hypothesis."

"... I have no idea what she just said," Kiba stated, "but that was completely AWESOME!"

Akamaru yipped in agreement, and that seemed to be the signal to break the silence, as everyone began speaking at once.

"Alice-chan you rock!"

"Most impressive. But how-?"

"-where did she get that thing from? I mean-"

"-poor Sasuke-kun!"

Kakashi held up his hand for silence, and gestured for Sakura to check Sasuke over. After all, he _had_ just been discharged from the hospital. And he was still dealing with that nasty seal that Orochimaru had put on him. And Alice had insulted his parents. Kakashi whistled soundlessly to himself. Maybe he should have held Sasuke back after all. Clearly he was in a bad way mentally and physically if a total stranger could enrage him to that degree and then take him out in a few seconds with what had looked to be really rather crude, albeit graceful moves from an obviously experienced but practically untrained woman.

Especially one who thought that chakra was magic! Wielding a...

Kakashi stared.

"Alice-san..." Kakashi paused.

Alice cocked her head towards him, her weapon still slung across her shoulder.

"Yes Kakashi?"

"I think I speak for all of us when I ask..." stay calm, stay calm, unknown quantity here, "what in the name of the shinigami is _that_?"

Alice blinked innocently at him. "Oh this?" She hefted the five-foot long pole topped with a wooden horse head, and spun the wheels that were at the bottom. "This is just my level 1 hobby horse. Didn't think he'd been quite rude enough for the Knightmare."

"Uh, f-forgive me for a-asking this Alice-san," Hinata spoke up for the first time. "B-but I thought hobby horses were children's t-toys?"

Alice regarded Hinata with an even gaze. "It depends on the child. After all, a branch is just a bit of tree until a man's head has been caved in by it."

To Alice's surprise, rather than seeming more intimidated, the white-eyed girl (who despite having what looked like cataracts seemed to be sighted, something that Alice found mildly intriguing) looked thoughtful.

"D-do you often use unconventional weapons Alice-san?" Alice noted that the stutter seemed to be diminishing. She had known a few people with speech impediments back at the Asylum. Usually it was the least of their problems, but she had always been interested to watch Laurie Jameson's stutter get ten times worse around particular wardens. She wondered who Hinata's warden was.

Alice shrugged in response to her question. "They all make logical sense to me," she said, not elaborating. The shinobi did not press her for details, respecting a fellow fighter's desire to keep a few surprises in store.

The thoughtful expression did not fade from Hinata's face, which Alice found to be unusual. It wasn't often she met people who took her seriously. Then again, even with her madness acknowledged, most of the ninja here seemed to be relatively unperturbed by it, taking her at her word. It was an unusual experience, but she could grow to like it.

AVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVA

Several hours later found Alice sitting quietly in a chair by the window, sipping green tea with jasmine as she watched the sun go down. Sasuke was apparently back in the hospital with a concussion. Alice thought she would send him some flowers with an apology card. She hadn't meant to hit him _that_ hard, but he had irritated her. On the other hand, going by most of the reactions of Sasuke's fellow students and his instructor, it seemed that he had had it coming. She thought it was a shame. He was quite a handsome boy, but his manners left much to be desired. Sakura's behaviour seemed frankly bizarre to Alice. If the girls back home had acted like that, they would have been labelled hoydens and hussies. But then perhaps it was different with these ninja.

Alice's stomach rumbled, and she supposed she should try to prepare something to eat. She was unsure of how to properly go about this though. She had, after all, been considered mad for the better part of ten years. People were generally wary of letting mad people near stoves. She could make tea just fine, because her mother had showed her how, but even back in London she had only the haziest of ideas when it came to how to cook food. She could do porridge, toast and she thought she might remember how to make scones from scratch, but anything more complicated was quite beyond her current abilities. She resolved to purchase a cookbook tomorrow. Yes, that might help. Then she would ask someone to show her how to use her electric stove. Somehow, that had been missed in the previous tour. Actually, come to think of it, there was someone she could ask right now. She could hear him thumping around upstairs.

Mind made up, she trudged up the stairs and knocked on the door. Once again there was a slight hesitation, but this time Naruto opened the door much quicker than last time.

"What is it Alice?" he asked her. "I was just making some ramen, oh hey! You don't know what ramen is! You have to try some! Come in! I only have instant, but after I get my paycheck tomorrow I could take you out to Ichiraku's they do the best ramen ever!"

Alice blinked, and followed Naruto inside. His apartment was what her mother would have euphemistically termed "typical for a bachelor", in that there were scattered scrolls, empty ramen cups and dirty cutlery all over the place, all covered in a thin layer of dust. There were slight cracks in the walls, and some shabby posters advertising this "Ramen" substance were stuck haphazardly to them.

Despite the layer of grime and the slight disrepair, Alice could not help but find it somewhat cosy. She supposed it must be the orange.

She said as much out loud, and was amused to see Naruto get even more excited.

"You like orange too? No-one I know likes orange! Well, except maybe Lee and Gai, but they only wear orange leg-warmers, and they think that green is better, so they don't count. But you like orange?"

Alice shrugged. "I like bright colours. I've spent too much time in dull grey places."

Thankfully Naruto seemed to take this at face-value, as he quickly moved on to show Alice how this Instant Ramen worked.

"See, first you boil the kettle, then you rip open the top of the cup, then you pour the boiling water in, then you wait for it to cool some, then it's ready, and you can eat delicious delicious ramen! I used to think that the three minutes it takes for instant ramen to cook was the worst thing ever, but it's still quicker than cooking fish over a camp-fire. I don't mind fish too much, but ramen is better. I like pork ramen and miso ramen the very best, but there are all kinds of awesome flavours..." Naruto babbled on, and Alice was content to let him do so. It saved her from having to come up with topics of conversation. She was appallingly bad at small-talk, so if Naruto wanted to fill the silence with his own nervous energy, she was perfectly happy to let him do so.

A few minutes later, and Naruto handed Alice a pair of long thin sticks and told her to dig into the shrimp-flavoured instant ramen. Alice stared at the sticks in some mild confusion. She thought she had heard of people from the East eating with such things, but she herself had never used any.

"Ittadakimasu!" Naruto proceeded to stuff ramen into his mouth, but Alice hesitated.

"I don't suppose you have a fork I could borrow? I'm afraid I don't know how to use these stick things," Alice said.

Naruto stared at her in surprise, noodles dropping from his open mouth back into the container. Alice politely pretended that she had not noticed. "Really? You can't use chopsticks? Why not? I don't have any forks, they only have them in some fancy restaurants."

Alice sighed. "Where I come from, we eat with metal cutlery. I'd also settle for a spoon."

Naruto nodded, stroking his chin in what he no doubt thought was a 'thoughtful' manner. "Well I can give you a spoon, but..." he paused. "Uh, would you like me to show you how to use the chopsticks?"

Alice considered, and then nodded. The idea of using two small sticks in lieu of civlised cutlery was intriguing.

Naruto grinned. "I'll show you how and you'll learn it in no time, or my name isn't Naruto Uzumaki dattebayo!"

A few demonstrations, and Naruto moulding Alice's fingers when she was not getting it quite right later, and Alice was able to pick up some of the noodles. She slurped them up, as she had seen Naruto doing, but was a little embarrassed when she found she had flicked soup everywhere. Still, at least she was getting food in her mouth. She considered the salty flavour, and decided that this ramen was not half bad. More interesting than porridge or dry toast, at any rate. More importantly, since Naruto had shown her how to make it, now she had something she could make until she figured out how to cook something more complicated. If only the food wasn't all so different here!

Having finished her container of ramen, and used the spoon Naruto had fetched her to drink the broth, Alice thanked him for letting her share his meal.

Naruto smiled sheepishly, and scratched the back of his head. "Uh, no problem Alice. After all, you already invited me over to your place- guess I'm just returning the favour in advance!"

AVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVA

Meanwhile, in another part of Konoha, a certain would-be avenger crouched in a dark corner, scowling to himself.

How in the hells could that, that _woman_ have managed to get one over on him like that? She was pathetic. She telegraphed her moves, she was far slower than him, and from what he had heard, she did not even know what chakra _was_! Kakashi had spoken to him after he had regained consciousness, and had explained to him why precisely he had lost.

Sasuke had been fuming as he sat up in his hospital bed, waiting to be cleared by the med-nins. "How did she do it? How the fuck did she beat me? She's a genjutsu type! Genjutsu doesn't even work on the Sharingan! She must have cheated somehow!"

Kakashi, who had been leaning against the pale green wall, reading his lurid copy of Icha Icha, had just snorted. "Of course she cheated. Some people would say that you cheated just by having a blood-line limit. It is the way of the ninja to lie, cheat and do whatever we must to accomplish our goals. Were you paying any attention during Ibiki's exam at all?" He shook his head sadly. "I am very disappointed in you, Sasuke. I know she insulted your family, but that is a cheap tactic that any fool could have used. You should have been able to beat Alice easily. She might have a way with illusions, but with the Sharingan that point should be moot, and her taijutsu is not impressive by any stretch of the imagination. You failed because you lost your temper, but also because you underestimated her, and disregarded what she meant when she said she was unused to sparring."

Sasuke had scowled, crumpling the starched sheet beneath his hands. "What, you think she was lying?"

Kakashi shook his head. "No, I think she told the truth. Tell me Sasuke, what is a spar?"

Sasuke's scowl deepened. Kakashi was patronising him. He _hated _ being patronised. "A fight between comrades," he answered curtly.

"And what do you do when you fight comrades that is different to fighting an enemy?" Kakashi asked him.

Sasuke followed the train of thought and then swore viciously.

"Exactly," Kakashi stated patiently. "You were fighting somene who is unused to holding back. She said it herself, and I don't think she was trying to insult you when she said that thing about not knowing how to pull her punches. I would go as far as to say that she is crazy enough that she might not even really understand about other people's limitations. You saw how easily she got up from that punch. If she was the normal civilian you accused her of being, that blow would have downed her. As it stands, by the sounds of it, she thought hitting you in the head with a heavy wooden club was holding back, because it wasn't one of her other, by the sounds of it, more advanced weapons."

Sasuke had stopped paying attention at the word 'crazy'. "She's crazy? What do you mean, she's crazy?"

Kakashi sighed in frustration. "Alice is unstable. I can't give you more details, but she has post-traumatic stress from what sounds like a combination of things from her childhood and her last mission. I have little doubt that were it not for how stretched thin Konoha is at the moment, Tsunade would not even contemplate allowing Alice onto active duty, in any capacity. As it is, I suspect that she is hard-pressed to think of something that Alice can do."

Sasuke snorted to himself. Stuff from her childhood? What in the hells could have happened to Alice that could possibly be comparable to his sick, twisted brother killing their entire clan, and then forcing him to relive the memories of it as a genjutsu? Twice! What could she know of having everyone and everything taken away by someone that you should be able to trust?

The med-nin had come in then, some simpering twit, who had fawned over him for being the Last Uchiha. She had quickly healed him of his concussion, and then told him he was free to go.

And so Sasuke now crouched in the dark, in the corner of the room where his parents had been murdered.

He needed to get stronger. Naruto was improving at an incredible rate, so quickly that Sasuke felt that he was standing still. Soon, the dobe might even catch up to him, and that was unthinkable. Sasuke was stagnating in this village. Kakashi was a washed-up has-been, and a pathetic excuse for a teacher. Even with private tutoring from him, even with knowing Kakashi's original jutsu, it had not been Sasuke who had taken out Gaara. No, it had been the stupid dobe.

And the Loser's luck had only been getting better. Sasuke had heard the gossip. Whilst he had been once again trapped in his brother's genjutsu (and oh how that defeat made his blood boil! Itachi had flicked his head like he was still a child, and once again called him unworthy. _How dare he!_) Naruto had been off with one of the Legendary Sannin! How the hell had an idiot like Naruto managed to earn the attention of not only Jiraiya, but also Tsunade? Who knew what sort of techniques the dobe might have managed to learn from them!

Sasuke was being left behind. He had been held back by people inferior to him, and Itachi had shown him precisely how pathetic Konoha's teachings were. This latest humiliation from this Alice woman was the last straw.

Kakashi had said it himself, "It is the way of the ninja to lie, cheat and do whatever we must to accomplish our goals." Sasuke thought himself above lying and cheating, but as for doing whatever he must to accomplish his goals...

Sasuke scratched at the seal upon his neck. Orochimaru had promised he would make him strong. It would mean betraying the village, but...

"It is the way of the ninja to... do whatever we must to accomplish our goals."

Four shadows appeared in front of him. The Oto note headband glinted in a shaft of moonlight.

Sasuke nodded grimly to himself. This was the right decision.

…...

_Sasuke Retrieval Arc is a Go!  
_

_Strap in. It's going to be a bumpy ride._


	8. Chapter 8: Slithy Toves Gyre and Gimble

Chapter 8: The Slithy Toves Gyre and Gimble in the Wabe

It took the patrolling Anbu approximately 20 minutes to notice that Sasuke was missing (they tended to keep an eye on him just on principle- brother of Itachi, their home-grown genius who had apparently gone mad and killed his entire family before becoming a missing-nin, who had a curse-seal from Orochimaru, the other famous missing-nin of Konoha? They would have been mad to not keep tabs on him,) but by that point in time, he was long gone. The Sound Four had done their job well, and had created a suitable distraction by setting fire to one of the civilian areas, so the firefighting force that most chunin were "volunteered" for was called in.

When the Anbu found Sasuke's pink-haired team mate unconscious, tear streaks on her face, Salamander and Owl had a bad feeling. Upon awakening the girl with smelling salts, they quickly ascertained the seriousness of the situation, and took her into custody. The girl had freely admitted that she would have gone with Sasuke, and so they could not take any chances. Owl did not believe Sakura to be a real threat, but years later remarked to her comrades, "the only favour that Uchiha kid ever did that girl was forcing her to stay behind. She wouldn't have lasted five minutes as a missing-nin." Three minutes later, Owl was nearly crippled for life, saved only by the skills of a certain mednin named Haruno Sakura. But that is another story.

By the time the Hokage was informed of Sasuke's defection, they had travelled far enough that the Hokage was unable to send any of the remaining Anbu without depleting the home defense, a thing that Konoha absolutely could not afford at this moment. Konoha's ranks had been seriously decimated by the Sound Invasion, and so the Godaime had been forced to play politics and pretend that Konoha's losses were not as severe as they had been. This meant that if people could afford the rates to hire jonin, she had to provide, even if she knew that the missions were really more exercises of narcissism or tests of Konoha's strength than those that genuinely required a ninja of jonin calibre.

At least such missions were unlikely to result in casualties unless the shinobi were being extremely careless, and so that at least was a blessing in disguise. Tsunade folded her hands together as she thought about what to do about this situation. On the one hand, Sasuke was the last Uchiha. Having him gone would no doubt be bad for morale in some circles. More to the point, the Council of Elders would never let her hear the end of it if she didn't send someone after him. Though that was the least of her worries. Sasuke was Naruto's team mate. Tsunade admitted to herself that she had more than a little fondness for the brat, and she knew the orange-clad jinchuriki would be absolute hell to live with if she let his precious team mate go.

On the other hand, Tsunade really had no one to send after the brat. Unless...

Tsunade smiled to herself. She was a betting woman. The Sandaime himself had left behind notes that indicated that Nara Shikamaru was a tactical genius whose like had been unseen in Konoha for at least a generation. So. She would send out the fresh chunin, with whoever he chose to go with him. He would get back the Uchiha brat for her, she'd give him the opportunity to get some blood on that pristine new flak-jacket of his, it was win-win as far as she was concerned.

One of these days, Tsunade was going to remember why she shouldn't gamble.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It was a few hours before dawn when Alice awoke to the sound of loud knocking on her upstairs neighbour's door. "Damnit Naruto! Open up! If I have to be awake there is no way in hell you get to sleep through this!"

Alice heard a loud thud, followed by drowsy cursing. If she had to make a guess, it would be that Naruto had fallen out of bed. She heard a rustling sound followed by a creaking of floorboards, and assumed he was getting up to answer the door.

"Shika? Kiba? What the hell, guys, it's not even dawn yet," she heard Naruto yawn.

"Come on man, we're going to go out and kick some serious ass!" Alice recognised the voice of the boy with the dog. She heard a yip that was acknowledged by Naruto, and figured the dog had come too.

"Sasuke has defected. I've been ordered to get a team together," the voice was low and serious by a process of elimination, Alice figured that this was 'Shika'. If Alice had not already been feeling more than a little wary, then that would have made her so. Low and serious voices never boded well. "He's your team mate. I'm going to need your expertise."

Alice's eyebrows shot up at the force and quality of the invective that issued from Naruto's lips. She had not heard the like of such language outside of a brothel or the docks. She wondered why she was surprised to hear such things from the mouth of her young neighbour. She had certainly heard worse things said by the children at the orphanage.

Alice sat up in bed, wondering what she should do. It was probably none of her business...

"Naruto. The Hokage told me that I could take whoever I want on this mission. I was thinking you, Kiba, Neji and Choji. Can you think of anyone else?"

"What about Shino, Shikamaru?" Naruto asked. "He kicked a lot of butt in the exams..."

Alice heard the now identified Shikamaru sigh. "No. When I recruited Neji, Hinata told me that Shino is away on a mission with his father. Aburame clan business."

There was a brief pause. "What about Alice?"

"Who?" Shikamaru sounded confused.

"Oh yeah man, she kicked Sasuke's ass! Hey, that's probably why he left, bitch couldn't take a beating..."

"Shut up Kiba. Who is this... Alice?" Shikamaru asked.

Alice pushed away her covers with a beatific smile. Now this sounded like it might be entertaining.

…...

_Hey guys, hope you all had a good holiday. I know I did :P Thank you to everyone who's been reviewing, your input is always a good source of entertainment/inspiration/nitpicking. On that note:_

_This is a (fan)fictional story, that has been written with the intent to entertain. Facts, especially historical ones, are exaggerated, stretched and occasionally out and out fabricated in the name of my own amusement. Do not, I repeat, do NOT take anything written in here about "Japan" or "Victorian London" to be more than (to use the term loosely) an artist's impression. We're talking caricature here. Anyone planning to use this story as a source for their highschool history homework should learn how to use wikipedia to find credible sources like everyone else. ;)  
_

_Catch you guys later :)_


	9. Chapter 9: The Cat Returns

Chapter 7: The Cat Returns

"So let me get this straight," said Shikamaru, rubbing his temples. "You two," he gestured to Naruto and Kiba, "want me to bring along on a sensitive political mission some shinobi I've never met before, whose abilities you are both unsure of, on the basis of 'she's pretty awesome' and 'she can kick Sasuke's ass'."

Two heads, one blonde, one brown, both spiky and tousled nodded in unison.

"Oh, she's not a shinobi though," Naruto suddenly remembered. "But she's totally kickass at genjutsu, and-!"

Shikamaru held up one hand to silence the incipient babbling.

If this was one of those silly manga, Shikamaru had a feeling that he would have been seeing two pairs of obscenely large puppy eyes. To be fair, Kiba wasn't too bad at puppy eyes. He must have asked Akamaru for tips.

"You had me at 'she's not a shinobi'," he said dryly.

Kiba grinned, his elongated canines glinting. "So she can come?"

Shikamaru snorted. "Fuck no."

Cue face-faults [1].

Shikamaru shook his head. Hallucinations were not a good way to start his first command mission. "No. Not happening. No way in hell am I taking some unknown civilian with us, I don't care how awesome you think she is, I don't know her skills, and she probably won't be able to keep up with us." Shikamaru shook his head. Sometimes he really wondered about some of his so-called peers. Did any of them use any logic at all? "Let's go. I told Neji and Choji to meet us at the gates. We have to move quickly, or we'll never catch the Uchiha."

Kiba shrugged and settled Akamaru on his head. "Eh, whatever man. Naruto, you coming?"

Fists clenched, Naruto bared his teeth in a grimace. Kiba nearly started. Had Naruto always had teeth like an Inuzuka?

"Let's go then," Naruto gritted out. He was going to bring Sasuke back to Konoha if he had to drag him by his stupid hair kicking and scowling.

Moments later, the three of them were gone.

Down in her dingy apartment, Alice stood, already dressed in her customary blue and white. She knew the Shikamaru kid was right. In her brief stay in Konoha, she had seen shinobi walking up walls and jumping from tree to tree like a pack of chimpanzees on that odd white power she had once seen some of the gentry genteelly snorting in the back room of a club. There was, to borrow a phrase from him, 'no way in hell' that she would be able to keep up with these kids if they were even half as fast as that Sasuke. She had been in enough fights in Wonderland to know when she was out-matched, and it had only because he had been predictable and unprepared for her split-second weapon change that she had won the fight.

That said...

"_Confront what frightens or offends you. Reckless or insulting talk should never go unchallenged__._"

Alice folded her arms in front of her. "I am hardly frightened, Cat."

Materialising from the shadows, a mangy feline with grey tiger-like stripes grinned with blood-stained, unnervingly human-like teeth.

"I was merely reminding you of something I thought I taught you years ago, Little Alice," the Chesire Cat sneered. "Are you going to let a mere _child_ speak of your skills in such a way, skills _I_ so carefully fostered in you? Or are you going to show them some of those claws I gave you?"

Alice snickered harshly. "I wondered when you would appear. I did not miss your cryptic counsel."

The Cat inclined his head regally. "And yet, unlike most of my brethren, when you call, I come. In my own sweet time of course, and I reserve the right to mislead whenever it amuses me."

"Which is always, of course," said Alice as she hefted a croquet mallet.

The Cat's grin widened. "I am hurt that you would even suggest such a thing, Alice."

Alice smirked back at him. "If ignorance is bliss, I'm not ecstatic any more."

The Cat purred in sinister amusement, before stepping lazily to one side. A dark portal that swirled with rainbow colours swam into existence on Alice's bedroom wall.

Alice swung her croquet mallet back and forth idly as she stepped in front of the portal.

"So where will this take me, Cat?"

"Oh you know, here then there. Via somewhere else entirely. It will get you where you want to go... eventually," the Cat flicked an ear in amusement. "Are you up for the challenge? But then, I am yet to see you ever back down. I see you hefting that croquet mallet. I'm sure you remember the answer to _that_ riddle."

Alice smiled. "Ask me it."

The Cat grinned ferally. "When _is_ a croquet mallet like a billyclub?"

Alice stepped forward. "Whenever I want it to be."

A moment later, and the portal disappeared, taking Alice with it.

The Cat tipped back his head and laughed, fading away slowly until only his grinning mouth could be seen, still laughing. Then that too disappeared.

From the shadows, two dark-clad figures let their concealing jutsu drop.

Gorilla Mask looked at Guinea Pig Mask. Guinea Pig Mask had his hands extended in a seal. "Kai! Kai!"

Gorilla Mask shook her head. "They're gone. Their chakra signatures have vanished completely."

Guinea Pig Mask lowered his hands, slowly.

Gorilla Mask wandered over to the wall where the portal had been and tentatively poked it. To her complete lack of surprise, nothing happened.

"Interesting," she murmured. "We should inform the Hokage. I have never seen a transportation jutsu like that one before."

"Screw the transportation jutsu, that cat summons was completely creepy!" Guinea Pig Mask exclaimed.

Gorilla Mask sighed. Newbies.

A brief hand gesture, and then twin swirls of leaves were the only things left behind.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

When Team Shikamaru, as Naruto had quickly dubbed them encountered the Sound Four, Shikamaru immediately had a bad feeling about the whole thing. He was not sure where the insight came from- perhaps it was pure instinct- but he just knew that there was something horribly wrong about the Four.

The ensuing skirmishes only proved this.

Shikamaru knew that the most important goal was to stop Sasuke from reaching Orochimaru. He didn't know what Orochimaru wanted with Sasuke, but whatever it was, there was far too much "missing (san)nin", "medical experiments" and "Sharingan" in the equation for him to be comfortable. If he had to, he would kill Sasuke himself. He hoped it wouldn't come to that, but he somehow doubted that the team mate that Sasuke not-so-jokingly referred to as the "dead last" was going to command enough respect to convince Sasuke to come back to the village.

But then Naruto had managed to talk/beat some sense into Neji, so who knew? He was working hard to become Konoha's Most Surprising Ninja.

But Surprise alone would not be enough to defeat the Sound Four.

Shikamaru was doing his best, looking at things as logically as he possibly could, strategising for the best possible outcome.

Even when it tore him apart.

Leaving behind Choji, his best friend since childhood, to fight that huge monster Jirobo had been one of the hardest things he had ever had to do, but he knew it was the logical thing. If the enemy was satisfied to sacrifice one of their number to slow them down, then Shikamaru's best option was to likewise sacrifice a team member to keep the enemy occupied. He knew Choji had improved since the chunin exams, and that he had his family's special food pills as a back-up, but...

No time for doubts. The enemy's purpose was to move the barrel that contained Sasuke as quickly in the direction of Orochimaru as possible.

His purpose had to be to stop them. Or else.

Neji had been the next one to be sacrificed. His genius for the Hyuuga brand of close-range martial arts, especially his spinning defense, Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven, would make him a strong match for the spider-like Soundnin. Shikamaru only hoped he would be strong enough to do more than delay him. If Jirobo or Kidomaru won their fights, then it meant two things of importance to the mission- firstly, that Shikamaru had given the order that had meant their deaths or incapacitation, and secondly, that the other two he, Kiba and Naruto were chasing would have back-up.

Which led him to this moment, where he had sent Naruto ahead, leaving himself and Kiba to fight the remaining two of the Sound Four. He had let Kiba have the strange taijutsu specialist with the aqua lipstick, and for himself, he had taken the foul-mouthed red-haired genjutsu specialist.

Shikamaru hated to admit it, but they were horribly out-matched. Kiba and Akamaru had fallen into the gorge a good ten minutes ago, and Sakon had quickly followed them. He doubted they were alive still.

He on the other hand was having even more trouble than he had thought he would have. When the girl had pulled out her flute and started playing, he had figured out quickly that she was a genjutsu type, that used the music she made on her flute as the basis for her genjutsu. At first he thought he had a decent chance. He bumbled around dodging her giant genjutsu demons, pretending that he was in imminent fear of his life, whilst he set traps using the contents of his weapons pouch. For a moment there, when his light bomb had gone off and he had caught her with his Shadow Neck-Binding Technique, he thought he might have her.

But then she had grown horns, and seemed suddenly twice as strong as she had seemed before. He felt an even stronger genjutsu take a hold on him. This was going to be tricky...

And then it happened. Something he couldn't have planned for. Something that Tayuya obviously hadn't planned for.

Casually as you please, a primly dressed Alice stepped out of a hole in what Shikamaru could have sworn was a solid tree trunk, even through the twisted vision that Tayuya's genjutsu had given him.

"Goodness, did you notice you have horns? I must say, they suit you." Alice told Tayuya in a conversational tone. She smoothed down her blood-stained apron with one hand. Shikamaru blinked. He could have sworn she was holding a giant teapot. Maybe this genjutsu was affecting him more than he thought.

"Who the fuck are you?" Tayuya demanded. "Where the fuck did you- you know what, I don't give a shit. Fuck off slut, I'm busy here."

Alice tsked, sashaying along the long tree branch like it was a broad city street.

"My, my, and I thought some of those from Konoha were an ill-mannered lot. Ah well. I was commenting on your horns. You know," Alice said. "I can do a similar trick. Want to see?"

Alice pulled out a glowing red box.

Shikamaru sensed a sinisterly odd, (or was that oddly sinister?) presence next to him, but didn't turn his head. He did hear a deep rasping voice whisper softly.

"Time to raise some Havoc. The dogs of war are loose."

…...

_[1]Lol. You guys didn't seriously think I was going to make things _that_ simple did you?_


	10. Chapter 10: In which Erisah is not dead

Chapter 10: In which the Author is Not Dead

Alice lifted the odd glowing box to her face.

All eyes were on her, as Shikamaru struggled to catch his breath, and Tayuya watched incredulously.

It was the perfect opportunity for a ninja to launch a sneak-attack.

So naturally, Temari took advantage of it.

Seconds later, Tayuya was out cold, Shikamaru was looking sheepish, and Temari was looking extremely smug.

Alice was looking oddly relieved.

"Thank you, stranger. I wasn't looking forward to going madder for a while. Red just isn't my colour," she said, dropping a slight curtsey. Temari just gave her a somewhat confused look, but nodded her acknowledgement of the thanks, and then turned to Shikamaru.

"I see you're still fighting girls," the blonde Sand-nin said to him.

Shikamaru just rolled his eyes skywards and muttered "Troublesome" under his breath. He made a few handsigns, and then sealed Tayuya's unconscious body into a scroll. That done, he shoved the scroll into a pocket and scowled. Women. Always causing him problems.

"Why are you even here?" Shikamaru demanded.

"Heard you Konoha nin might need to be bailed out of a bit of trouble," Temari said. "Haven't you Leaf kids learned not to bite off more than you can chew?"

To her surprise, he just waved dismissively at her. "No, no I know why _you_ are here. Obviously Tsunade-sama decided to test the worth of the alliance. And if Suna sent _your_ team then they're probably serious. Or hoping that if your brother decides to go back to the insanity, only Konoha-nin will get hurt. But seeing as you look considerably more relaxed than the last time I saw you, I'm going to go with option 1. Which is good for you, because the price of rice in Suna is going to drop by fourteen percent because of it, and it's good for us, because we're going to need your help to drag that Uchiha bastard back from these Sound assholes. Whatever weird shit Orochimaru has been grafting into them has made them a little tougher than anticipated." Shikamaru stopped for a breath, and Temari did her best not to gape. Damn. It wasn't like she thought that he was stupid- his out-manouevring of her in the chunin exams was proof enough that he was smart- but _shit_ she was still underestimating this kid.

Shikamaru acknowledged her surprise with a lazy eyeroll, and then continued. "I was asking _her_ what in the name of the nine tailed beasts is _she_ doing here, when I specifically said she was _not _requested for this mission? Alice, why are you not still in Konoha?"

Temari raised an eyebrow. Shikamaru sounded _pissed_. Though to be fair, Temari would be pretty annoyed if someone had butted in on one of her missions, as this Alice chick seemed to have done.

The Alice chick however seemed completely unperturbed by the uncharacteristic tones from the Nara kid. She brushed some dust away from her apron, and then smiled eerily. Temari tried to ignore the creeping sensation of the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end.

"Something told me I would be needed," Alice said simply. "And I always listen to Something, because she tends to be right. You would have managed without me, but then you would be broken, and take too long, and Naruto would be late for tea." Her grin widened. "I like Naruto. He's got a ragemonster inside like mine. Except that it isn't his like mine is mine. Someone else put it there, and it's a miracle he's as sane as he is, but he isn't as sane as you all seem to assume he is. Odd. You ninja have such very odd standards of sanity." Alice cocked her head suddenly, and turned to Temari. "Where _are_ my manners? My name is Alice Liddell, or as you ninja seem to prefer, Liddell Alice. Though I don't think I'm very Liddell any more..."

"Alice!" A tall, grey, emaciated cat stepped out of the shadows, causing both Temari and Shikamaru to automatically assume defensive postures. The Cat sneered at them both. "Aren't you forgetting something? Several comrades fighting for their lives perhaps? Time is a terrible thing to waste, especially when it is other people's," he half purred.

Alice snapped to attention, and then suddenly, a portal had appeared on the tree next to her.

"Cat," she nodded her slightly chagrinned thanks, and stepped straight through the slightly glowing dark orb. The Cat looked at Temari and Shikamaru questioningly. "Are you not coming? I thought you might want to keep both eyes on the mad woman."

Shikamaru's eyebrows raised. "Aren't you her Summon Cat-san? Most summons have more loyalty to those who hold their contracts."

The Cat made a derisive noise. "Please. Have you ever known a cat to come when called? Alice and I have no... formal agreement. I gather that here, creatures not entirely unlike me... donate their services in fighting your enemies, so long as the..." the Cat grimaced as though he had eaten a lemon, "...Summoner meets their standards. Alice and I have an entirely different relationship."

Slowly, the Cat faded out of existence, until only his grin was visible. "Well come on then, _brave __warriors_," the grin changed subtly until it was a sneer. "On my honour as a Feline, this portal will lead you to a madwoman, two demon-possessed and a boy in green spandex. And those are the people on _your_ side. The portal will close in thirty seconds, otherwise you're going to have to catch up on your own."

Temari looked askance at Shikamaru. He seemed to have at least a clue as to what was going on here. Though the Cat did sound like he was offering help, as back-handed (back-pawed?) as it seemed.

Shikamaru's expression cleared to his habitual boredom, and he just shrugged, before stepping through the portal.

Moments later, Temari jumped in after him.

AVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVA

The portal dropped them all out in the middle of a field, overlooking a spot that Shikamaru and Temari instantly recognised as the Valley of the End. To their left, there was a stand of trees.

Shikamaru and Temari turned to Alice, who was standing, waiting, staring intently at the treeline. In her hands was an item that looked like the unholy offspring of an enormous teapot and a shrine guardian statue. It was golden, it was spiky, it had a clock with bizarre-looking numerals on the face, embedded in it, and it was emitting red steam.

Temari, despite her years of practice at keeping an unconcerned expression no matter what she was faced with, goggled.

"What is that?"

Shikamaru's eyebrows were both raised at the sight of the weapon, but he had what he felt was a more pertinent question.

"Why are we here?" he demanded. "Your Cat said that the portal would bring us to my teammates."

Alice didn't turn around, but replied. "He's not my Cat. Cat's own themselves. Sasuke and Naruto will come out of that stand of trees in three... two..."

Suddenly, a dark-haired figure in blue came leaping out of the treeline, closely followed by a blonde in orange.

"SASUKE!" the blonde roared.

Alice braced herself, and then suddenly a shrill whistling noise came from the weird contraption in her hands. Sasuke turned to look, but was immediately distracted by one of the ten kage bunshin that Naruto had sent after him, who had taken his moment of distraction as an opportunity to try and kick him in the face.

Almost negligently, Sasuke popped the kage bunshin with a kunai blow, and then turned to check what that noise had been...

Just in time to get hit directly in the upper arm with some sort of heavy missile that burned, and smelt very bizarrely of over-stewed tea.

Uchiha eyes might be special, but their bones would break the same as any other ninja's given the same stress. Sasuke's humerus fractured immediately.

His scream of agony echoed off the Valley rocks.

Shikamaru was already running forward to snare the Uchiha in his shadow, but he could see already that he wasn't close enough.

Naruto on the other hand, was.

With a shout of rage, he dove forward and bodily tackled his team-mate, mercilessly grabbing onto Sasuke's broken arm.

Sasuke screamed, and struggled, but Naruto was heavier than him, and had a tight grip on his injured arm. Any movement on Sasuke's part caused shooting pains that were impossible to ignore- he had broken bones before in training, but they had usually been healed by medical ninjutsu within minutes, after careful splinting that had not jarred them any further... everyone was careful with the health of the "last" Uchiha.

This pain though, was at least as bad as the pain from the seal had been when Orochimaru had first bitten him. And unlike that time, he was not given the luxury of falling into unconsciousness. Every time it was pulled, it felt like his arm was being torn off. Going by the claws that Naruto had sprouted at some point, for a split-second Sasuke wondered if that was not indeed the case.

About the point where Sasuke was trying to grit his teeth and half-form plans to get Naruto off him, a new, sharp pain suddenly hit the side of his head, and everything mercifully went black.

AVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVA

"Damnit!" Naruto roared. He rounded on Shikamaru, who jumped back instinctively at the blast of killing intent.

Naruto stood over the body of his best friend, incandescent with rage.

To all appearances completely oblivious, Alice moved sedately until she was standing in between him and Shikamaru.

"Are you planning on letting out your ragemonster, neighbour?" she asked him politely. Shikamaru noticed, because he couldn't turn the noticing off, that the bizarre contraption that had launched the missile that had knocked down Sasuke was gone, and instead Alice was carrying what looked like some sort of club, with an odd bird-shaped head. Shikamaru shook his head and did his best to focus on the more imminent threat, of Konoha's jinchuriki looking like he was about to flip his lid.

Temari on the other hand stayed right the hell back. A lifetime of experience with a jinchuriki who was always a half-second from being openly homicidal had conditioned her to not step in front of one who had defeated him in battle.

She figured that the Alice girl was suicidal.

To her utter surprise however, Alice's words seemed to work, and Naruto visibly worked to calm down. A few moments later, and Temari and Shikamaru breathed a sigh of relief, as the killing intent dissipated.

Alice simply stared at Naruto for a few moments, and then nodded, unconcernedly causing her club to vanish into thin air.

Temari blinked. Damn. She wanted to know that trick.

Shikamaru took a deep, stabilising breath.

"Right. Alice, can you get the Uchiha back to the village via one of your... portals?"

"No, I cannot." Shikamaru opened his mouth to demand why, but Alice pre-empted him. "The portals come from Chesire Cat. He might, if we ask him nicely. Or he might not, because he's contrary that way. Honestly, anyone would think he grew silver-bells and cockle-shells in his garden."

The Cat suddenly phased into existence a few feet away from them. The ninja did their best to not jump straight out of their skins, whereas Alice merely smiled and asked the Cat if he would allow a ninja to travel with the Uchiha back to Konoha through one of his portals.

"I might," said the Cat.

The ninja waited for him to continue, but he just sat there silently, calmly grinning at them all with his suspiciously human-like teeth.

Unsurprisingly, Naruto broke first. Surprisingly to Shikamaru at least, when he shouted, it was actually something useful and to the point. "What do you want?" the jinchuriki demanded.

The Cat's grin widened. "I want what I have always wanted. I want Alice protected."

…...

_A/N: Still Alive, Still Posting. Eventually._


	11. 11: And the Mome Raths Outgrabe

_A/N: Oops. My Bad. And that's what happens when one tries to post at 2am. Let that be a lesson to me. I swear this is the real chapter 11 this time._

Chapter 11: And the Mome Raths Outgrabe

"I want what I have always wanted. I want Alice protected," the Cat said.

Alice's eyes widened. Shikamaru, watching her carefully from the corner of his eye, and Temari who didn't bother being subtle about her observance, were both interested to see this expression of surprise.

The Cat noticed this too, and let out a frustrated sigh.

"A secret is only a secret when it is unspoken to another. I've told you this before, Alice,but I really would have thought that this one at least was obvious. Honestly girl, pause for a moment and consider the sum of my actions towards you."

Alice's brows pinched together.

"But why did it have to be a secret? I don't understand, Cat."

The Cat snorted. "Of course you don't. You don't need to understand, and making you understand would be at best a waste of time, and at worst a deadly mistake. I never needed you to understand, I only needed you to believe, especially in six impossible things before breakfast, because otherwise 'Wonderland' had no chance in surviving-" The Cat cut himself off, shaking his head in irritation. "This is not the time, place or audience for this conversation. Follow."

A portal suddenly appeared, opening in mid-air. The Cat vanished.

Naruto, his orange jumpsuit marred by dirt, blood and grass-stains and _still_ glowing gaped.

"What the hell is that?" he demanded, pointing at the portal.

Alice inclined her head. "A portal. It will take us to wherever Cat means us to go. And though his meanings are often twisted, he has yet to lead me astray." She smirked. "Though he may be a stray leading me," she added faux-thoughtfully.

Naruto shuddered, eyes still red-tinged and black slashes across his face fading very slowly.

"I don't have many good experiences of following cats," he joked, causing the assembled Konoha nin to subconsciously cringe at his reference to Tora.

Alice's smirk widened into a slightly unsettling grin.

"Oh, I never said he led me to good places. No, he is most certainly the Virgil to my Dante, but then, he did generally show me what to do to get back out."

Shikamaru made careful note of the names, especially the very odd, obviously foreign pronunciation of the first one. If Alice was speaking in code, he would eventually figure it out. He had yet to decide what he thought about her. On the one hand, she seemed to be of questionable mental state, had injected herself into his mission without so much as a by-your-leave and was ridiculously slow, with a fighting style that as far as he could tell was crude and without form. On the other hand, she seemed to have insight, had thus far managed to complete every objective she had set for herself (including saving his arse, which he was more than a little irritated by, since she was supposed to be a _civilian_), whilst remaining almost entirely inscrutable.

Was Alice really a civilian, or was she some kind of kunoichi idiot savant? She was thus far completely unpredictable.

It pained Shikamaru to remember that similar things could be said about Naruto. And she was what, his neighbour? Who had somehow known exactly what to say to talk him down from some sort of jinchuriki (yes, Shikamaru had figured out Naruto was a jinchuriki since the events of the Chunin Finals it was painfully obvious in hindsight) rage-fest?

All in all, it was all very troublesome.

He was about to say that perhaps it would not be a good idea to jump through an unknown portal made by a Summon of a relatively unknown _civilian woman_, but then Naruto decided to be himself.

"Well, if Alice thinks this is a good idea, then that's good enough for me." And with that, Naruto, with the unconscious body of the Uchiha slung over his shoulder, stepped unceremoniously through the portal.

As the assembled shinobi gaped, Alice smiled sardonically at them and followed her orange-wearing neighbour.

Shikamaru and Temari swore simultaneously, then turned to look at one another.

Shikamaru groaned. "As team leader of this bullshit operation I'm probably supposed to follow them. I was charged with returning Sasuke, so I am bound to follow," he admitted reluctantly.

Temari nodded, all business. "Fine. My mission is support, so I'll collect my brothers and any of your wayward team members."

Shikamaru regarded Temari, weighing the sincerity of her tone, and then nodded, apparently satisfied. "Done. I'll see you back in Konoha."

And with that, he steeled himself and slouched through the portal, disappearing from view. Moments later, the portal vanished.

Temari blinked.

"Just when I thought Leaf-nin couldn't get any stranger," she murmured aloud.

Setting her fan on her shoulder, she started the trek back to figure out what trouble her brothers had managed to get into _this_ time.

AVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVA

Shikamaru stepped through the portal, and was suddenly in the Hokage's office.

He was greeted by the vision of an upturned sake bowl still clattering on the table, the Hokage standing up in a defensive position, and an elderly woman with a grey ponytail even fuller and spikier than a Nara's calmly sitting back and smoking a pipe. Alice was standing to one side, hands demurely clasped in front of her apron, and Naruto was babbling and gesticulating excitedly with one hand, the other holding Sasuke's prone form steady on his shoulder.

The Cat was nowhere to be seen.

"Troublesome." The word escaped before Shikamaru could restrain himself, and the Hokage's eyes snapped to him.

Fortunately, she seemed to think his reaction was amusing.

"Trust a Nara to sum this situation up in one word. Now would someone care to tell me what in the hells is going on here?" The Hokage demanded. "Naruto! Shut it!"

Sasuke picked that moment to groan.

The Hokage's attention snapped to him. "Naruto. Put him on the table. I'll patch up whatever damage he has so he can be fresh for Ibiki."

Naruto, of course (Shikamaru rolled his eyes) protested. "Ibiki! Baa-chan! He's the head of Torture and Interrogation!"

Tsunade snorted. "You think I don't know that brat? We need to figure out why the Uchiha brat decided to defect, and then explain to him why it was such a very, very bad idea. Your Sensei is quite displeased with him you know, so I'm sure he'll volunteer to help with Sasuke's re-education."

"Such a shame," said the old woman with the pipe. Shikamaru realised suddenly that for some reason she was wearing cat-ears on her head. That was... odd. "I really had hope for those two boys, but sometimes you just have to accept that you can't save everyone."

"Not all hope is lost whilst they both live."

Shikamaru looked for who had spoken, and then spotted a small pale brown cat dressed in a red kimono with an odd mark on its forehead. Internally he groaned. Not _more_ Cat Summons.

Suddenly, the grey-striped mangy cat with the disconcerting grin appeared in one corner. "Ah, but don't forget that hope was the last thing to come out of Pandora's box of horrors," he said.

"Cat, you are tardy," interjected Alice before the kimono-clad cat could reply.

The Cat merely looked down its nose disdainfully at her. "I am never late, and better than never. Therefore I am better than never late."

"Chishiru-san*. This is her?" the old woman with the cat-ears spoke.

The skeletal cat rolled his eyes. "Do you see anyone else in this room treating me with contempt? That would be an indication that we have bred some familiarity."

Alice smiled mirthlessly. "If that were the case Cat, then you are familiar with everyone you meet."

"Quiet child. You should know better than to interrupt your elders. I am called Nekobaa," the old woman said.

"I am Alice Liddell," Alice replied.

"I know your name, young one. Chishiru has been telling tales of you for a long time now."

Alice seemed surprised. "You know Cheshire?" Then she seemed to gather herself. "What tales, pray, has he been telling of me?" She turned to the cat. "Did you tattle, Cat? Would that make you a Cattle-tale?"

Chishiru scoffed elegantly. "Of the two of us you are the one who looks more bovine."

"Would both of you be quiet!" Nekobaa suddenly hissed.

Both Alice and Chishiru quietened. Shikamaru's brows raised.

"That's better," said Nekobaa, more sedately. "Now Alice, I was just now telling Hokage-sama here that it is extremely important that you are kept safe and alive. A world depends on it."

Naruto's jaw dropped, and he started babbling. "The world depends on it!? Why? What are you talking about old lady?"

Nekobaa rolled her eyes.

"I didn't say _the_ world, I said _a _world. More specifically, Alice's psyche hosts the world that Summons come from," she explained.

The shinobi stared at her, stunned.

"You mean to say..." Tsunade sounded skeptical. "I know you said she was important, but how...?"

Nekobaa waved her hand dismissively. "Ask any of your summons, and they will confirm it."

Tsunade shrugged. "Easy enough to check." A few hand seals later, and a slug the size of a horse popped into the room.

"What's up, Tsu... Miss Alice!" exclaimed the Slug.

Alice blinked. "I'm afraid I don't believe that I've made your acquaintance."

The Slug inclined its head.

"No, we were never introduced, but everyone in Wonderland knows of Alice Liddell. It's important to know your landlady after all." The Slug paused. "Caterpillar had nothing but good things to say of you."

All turned to see how Alice was reacting this information, and the shinobi were surprised to see how calm Alice seemed.

"That smushy layabout," Alice almost smiled. "Does he still smoke that hookah now that he's Butterfly?"

The Slug made an odd rippling movement that might have been a shrug in a vertebrate with limbs.

"I wouldn't know, Miss Alice. Most of the time now he's too high to talk to."

Shikamaru had to stifle a snort about that, and to his mild surprise, Naruto didn't bother. The surprise was mild only because Naruto understood the hookah reference, not because he didn't restrain his reaction. Sometimes Shikamaru really wondered why a person like Naruto, who seemed to wear his heart on his sleeve was a ninja.

On the other hand, Shikamaru had never heard about Naruto being a jinchuriki until he made chuunin (and it explained a lot about why Naruto had survived against Gaara, that was for sure,) so clearly Naruto's skills at hiding secrets weren't as bad as one might assume.

Tsunade rubbed at her temples, as if to ward off a headache. "Thank you, Kujiko. You can go now."

The Slug, Kujiko bowed its head, and disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Tsunade just shook her head. "This makes no sense. How in the name of Kami could the entire world of the summons be contained in the head of some civilian?"

Alice smiled serenely. "I used to say that if I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?"

The shinobi in the room just stared at her in non-comprehension.

Chishiru huffed out a sardonic laugh. "All ways you see here are the Queen's ways." He rolled his eyes at the shinobi. "Alice here doesn't suffer from insanity. She enjoys every minute of it."

"And this is why it was a Cat chosen to be Alice's guardian," said Nekobaa in a sage-like tone. "You shinobi always seem to think that you have the market on twisty turns of mind, but there's a reason why there is the saying. A cat can stare at a queen, and in the world of the mad, the half-sane woman is indeed queen." Conspiratorially she leaned forward, and said more quietly, "a person who manages to understand a cat is qualified to understand most anything else."

"Nekobaa-san, you always say the same thing," came a groan.

The room's attention was distracted to Sasuke, who sat up, blinking woozily.

Suddenly, he seemed to realise that he was sitting on the Hokage's desk, and promptly turned an even paler shade than usual. The Hokage took him by the shoulder with an implacable grip, a bare millisecond before he would have tried to run.

"Don't even think about it," she hissed. "You, brat, are in deep shit."

Two ANBU dropped from the ceiling, and Tsunade tossed them the errant Uchiha.

"Take him to one of the cells. I want this deserting brat out of my sight."

Sasuke slumped between his captors, glaring balefully at all and sundry to hide the sudden thrill of fear he felt. Rumours of what happened to prisoners at Ibiki's hands were passed around in whispers, as though if he heard them, his attention might be caught. Sasuke had always felt a small amount of gleeful smugness that Itachi, if caught, might one day end up in that position.

But it wasn't Itachi who had been caught, and by the dead-last no less.

Speaking of who...

"But Baa-chan!" Naruto looked to be winding himself up for a loud and lengthy protest, but Tsunade was hearing none of it.

"No, Naruto. I don't care if he's your team-mate. As far as I am aware he wilfully deserted with intention to defect, and abandoning one's duty is one of the worst crimes that we as shinobi can commit. He betrayed you, and he betrayed this village. He will suffer the consequences."

"But Baa-chan, he's just crazy because of the cursed hickey that Orochimaru-teme gave him!"

"Dobe, shut up," said Sasuke dully, chakra exhaustion only fuelling his despair.

Tsunade scowled. "Silence, brat. I have not forgotten. But that is no excuse. We have another ninja who has survived with one of Orochimaru's curse-seals for years without once wavering in her sense of duty." Tsunade waved her hand dismissively at the ANBU. "Go."

A moment later, and the only evidence that Sasuke and the two ANBU had even been present was a space in the middle of the room with a few scattered leaves.

Nekobaa sighed. "Such a shame. I had such hopes for those boys, and look how both of them turned out." She shook her head sadly.

"It seems I shall forever be surrounded by Insane Children," murmured Alice, unwittingly drawing attention back to herself.

Tsunade glared at her.

"So. If I am to believe what Nekobaa is telling me, you need to be under protection, because somehow," Tsunade shook her head incredulously, "you apparently have an entire world in your head that just so happens to be the homeland of the Summons. Correct?"

Alice just shrugged. "Apparently so. I would have said earlier today that I know nothing of Summons, but if they are all creatures of some intelligence from Wonderland, well, perhaps then I have more knowledge than I knew." She bit her lip thoughtfully. "If I know more than I think I know, but I don't know what I know, then how can I know what I think? 'Tis a curious riddle for one's own self-knowledge."

Tsunade seemed to be visibly restraining herself from making some violent motion. Shikamaru had the sudden feeling that she wished to hit her head on the desk. He himself was becoming more and more bemused with this Alice woman. The more he learned of her, the less sense she made.

Troublesome.

"Right. Well in that case, I'll debrief the three of you, and then you can go home. Alice, I'm going to give you a bodyguard, because obviously you need someone to discourage you from..." Tsunade seemed to search for the right word, before deciding on "_freelancing_ on official Konoha missions."

Alice inclined her head. Tsunade, long past exasperated, decided that close enough was good enough as far as this mad enigma and shows of respect were concerned.

"But first..." Tsunade glared around the room. "I want explanations, and I want them now."

…...

_A/N:_

_* "Chi" is Japanese for blood, and "shiru" means "knows or is aquainted with". Oddly appropriate, I thought, and understandable how a young Alice might misinterpret the (completely made up by me with the help of a student dictionary and probably not in the correct form, but we're going to run with it) Japanese name as being a familiar English word, i.e. the name for the area known as Cheshire._

_Surprise! It's an update!_

_Good gods this chapter took a while to get out. Part of it was Real Life intruding (as it always does,) but honestly, it just took me ages to get this all out in a semi-coherent fashion. Nearly called this chapter "blood from a stone" in honour of the writing process. Hope you all enjoyed, but as always, all of you with strong opinions will let me know what you think._

_Ciao,_

_Erisah_


	12. In which the Fourth Wall is Shattered

Chapter 12: In Which The Fourth Wall Is Shattered

The scene in Tsunade's office was tense.

The Godaime Hokage sat behind her desk, spine rigidly straight, glaring at the strange woman who seemed to have come from nowhere to cause her endless headaches, as an aging Cat-Lady sat to her left, calmly smoking a pipe, and her newest chunin and the jinchuriki stood to her right. The door had just swung shut behind the ANBU escorting the youngest Uchiha to a holding cell, and three Cat Summons, including one with horrifyingly human-like teeth that grinned at her like the nastiest of gallows humour, were watching the proceedings with interest.

Tsunade resisted the urge to massage her temples. If she had known she would have to deal with this kind of shit in becoming Hokage, she would have told that annoying blonde kid just where he could shove his opinions and booked it whilst she still could, honour or not.

"So," said Tsunade. "How is it that my summons knew you, Alice? Because even if she does apparently exist within your head, that does not explain how she knew what you looked like."

"Every summons animal can recognise Alice, because her chakra signature feels like home. It tastes like the Moonlight Sonata and the colour puce, and sounds like salt and vinegar," said the small cat summons in the red kimono in a mildly dreamy voice.

"Well said Hina, but I always thought she tasted more like Chopin's Nocturne in C Sharp Minor," the cat in the blue kimono interjected.

Hina's brow creased in a frown, deforming the kanji there. "That, Denka, is because you ate too much wasabi at an impressionable age. Honestly, it's in entirely the wrong key..."

Chishiru snorted. "You're both entirely wrong. She tastes like Javier Navarrete's Pan's Labyrinth Lullaby, played on a music box."

The two smaller cat summons paused as they considered this.

"You know Chishiru, you may have a point," admitted Denka, as Hina nodded thoughtfully.

The assembled ninja shared confused glances, and silently came to the conclusion to let that bizarre turn in the conversation lie, assuming that it was a Summons thing.

"The next thing I want to know," Tsunade cracked her knuckles, "is how the hell the world of the summons could possibly fit in one person's head!?"

Chishiru, Alice's creepy grinning Cat, decided to answer that, as much as he ever answered anything. That is to say, cryptically.

"It doesn't," he said, simply.

Tsunade turned her glare onto him, but if possible, he was even less perturbed than Alice. He merely stared back balefully, as though watching a lizard skittering past his paw.

Nekobaa, as the resident human expert on what the hell was going on, decided to offer at least some explanation, since it seemed that the summons weren't feeling inclined.

"It's complicated," she said, "but not uncommon. It comes down to physics."

Tsunade looked at the orange-clothed Cat-lady as though she'd grown a second head.

"Physics," she repeated dryly.

"Yes," said Nekobaa. "Now, the first thing that you need to accept is that there is no such thing as something impossible in the multi-verse."

Alice smiled at that, stunning most of the others in the room, because none of them had ever seen her smile in a way that didn't have a nasty edge to it before. She actually had a surprisingly nice smile, Shikamaru thought to himself, before realising he'd had the thought and having to restrain a shudder. He found most women Troublesome. The more time he spent in Alice's presence, the more he was coming to understand that when it came to Troublesome, she was at some point so distantly past that category's comprehension that the categorical criteria had been reduced to rocking itself back and forth in the fetal position.

Nekobaa continued. "Basically, if everything that is possible is not only possible but happening somewhere in somewhen, then there has to be a multitude of different dimensions to support this. There are multitudinous gods, but at some point in the future or past, even they find themselves to be pretty stretched out just trying to support all that possibility. Even the Anthropomorphic Personifications were getting tired of it. Because frankly, part of the problem was us humans."

"How so?" Tsunade asked the question on everyone assembled's mind.

"Well, the thing is, somewhere along the line we went and became imaginative," Nekobaa replied. "No one's fessing up to giving us the ability, so the agreed story is that it spontaneously evolved. So that means unless there's some serious retconning of the canon, instead of using the ability like any other normal animal, to envision the future and figure out where the next threat or meal was coming on, us humans started asking ourselves questions like 'where did we come from,' 'what is the nature of human consciousness,' and 'why god, why?'" She paused to take a puff of her pipe. "That wasn't so much of a problem, until we started to take it upon ourselves to answer our own questions with stories. And since the rules of the multi-verse is that if everything possible is true somewhere..."

"'Every time a new story is told, a new world is born where it _is_ true'," Alice interjected in delighted tones, thoroughly disturbing the more logical ninja present. "That's what my father used to tell me, and..." she gasped, "_that_ must be why he told me to take up the White Queen's policy of spending half an hour each day of dreaming up six impossible things before breakfast!"

To Naruto's eyes, Alice seemed to suddenly look much younger, with a strange ethereal glow appearing around her. Before he could say anything though, Nekobaa continued.

"You seem to have caught on, and not a moment too soon," Nekobaa told Alice. I suppose you can't be blamed, for Chishiru's efforts aside, your training has been appallingly neglected, but the fact of the matter is, you were always destined to be a lynch pin."

"I'm sorry, a what?" Tsunade demanded.

"I was getting to that part of the explanation, but Alice jumped ahead," Nekobaa replied, completely unruffled by the Godaime's temper and killing intent. "The simplified version was that the collective deities got together and decided that since it was humans who were spending all this time spawning new realities, it should be humans supporting them. The best part is that by doing this, after a while the new realities become self-sustaining, with the bones of the reality created by the canon, and the flesh by the fanon. So every time a human has the need to reinvent an old dream, the commonalities are strengthened across the realities that fit that universe, and this ties it all together. The problem that then arises is the occasional author doesn't create enough detail to support one of their concepts, and then the deities have to consider where to put the denizens that exist off-screen, that even the fanon doesn't seem to care much about."

"So," Nekobaa blew a smoke ring, "they do this thing called 'making crossovers' where they'll cause realities to overlap. Usually, they need to do this by bypassing it through a human's psyche to make the link. The human in question might feel the sensation of a sudden spark of creativity, as their muse is metaphysically whispering in their ear to conduct some maintenance." She looked directly at you.

Yes you, reading this on your computer screen. She's looking at you right now. Now you're looking confused. Possibly you just said a variation of "what the hell!?" Possibly you're now wondering where the hell the writer is planning on going with this inexplicable breaking of the Fourth Wall.

…

...

Now she's smirking.

"If in an infinite multi-verse, everything that is possible is true somewhere, then every moment that occurs will eventually be written down in a story. Some describe this as the infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters conundrum, and my goodness is _that_ dimension bizarre, but the fact is, one day, someone will have, or already has, written this entire conversation out word for word. I do not know their name, and it is probable that they would be writing under a pseudonym anyway, but they probably have stupid hair."

_A/N: Thanks a bunch, Nekobaa._

"You're welcome. Now where was I, oh yes." Nekobaa turned to Alice. "The thing is, the Powers That Be decided when it was their turn to sort things out was to turn your family's incredible imagination into the home-land for Anthropomorphic Creatures. The First Liddell they chose you've actually met, because in reward for her tireless work in stabilising Wonderland, she was rewarded with the title of White Queen."

Alice blinked. "She didn't seem all that happy when I saw her," was all she said.

Nekobaa shrugged. "Don't look at me. I'm just the chosen messenger, because I'm the longest-lived holder of the Cat Contract. When the Powers That Be saw things going horribly wrong in your particular reality, they press-ganged me, told me only what they thought I needed to know so I could try and fix things from the human end, and left me stranded. Apparently the problem with a lot of Deus Ex Machina (what we call it when they directly meddle) is that it sometimes breaks suspension of disbelief enough that entire realities can break apart from the logical rubber band effect."

"The logical rubber band effect?" blurted out Naruto, before clapping his hands over his mouth.

Nekobaa however seemed unperturbed by his interruption. "Yes. You stretch a rubber band far enough, and eventually it either snaps back into place, or it just snaps. With Infinite Possibilities, it does both. When Schroedinger's Rubber Band Effect occurs, in which logic has both reasserted itself and shattered beyond all comprehension, people tend to put the book down, so to speak, and that does irreparable things to the reality. Alice's family however were the supporting minds that took care of the Anthropomorphic Creatures World when Kishimoto was neglectful of their homeland. There has been some support given to them over the years, with Redwall and Salamandastron coming into being, along with the Wind in the Willows denizens, but the Liddell's Wonderland was the strongest vein of it, because they had the conviction to not only bring the world into being, but to _believe_ in it. The original story has been lost to the ages, but Alice's Great-great-great-great grandmother Bianca Liddell told it to her son every night before bed time, and he believed every word of it. And then as he started to lose faith, he passed it on down to his sons and daughters, and so on and so on until Alice."

"Ah," said Alice. "So that's why it was important that I was mad. These... Powers..." she grimaced, "needed me to keep believing, because there was no one for me to pass it onto, and... wait a moment." She scowled. "If there are infinite possibilities, then there are infinite worlds in which I exist, or existed. There must have been at least a few where I had children, or my sister did, and the line was unbroken."

"True," said Nekobaa. "But the problem is that in most of the possibilities, neither of those things happened. In a few cases, I was told, you or your sister had children, but the story wasn't being passed on. Either your sister didn't wish for your corrupting influence, or you had lost your belief, or your children were too cynical to provide the necessary belief. Cynicism is such a tragedy in ones so young," Nekobaa said, shaking her head sadly. "In any case, we needed at least one possibility in which you and others were told of your importance, to make absolutely certain that the world you call Wonderland was stabilised in existence once and for all." Nekobaa paused thoughtfully. "Of course, this is a bit of a paradox, as by its very nature Wonderland is constantly in flux, but the fact remains that of all the Alices, it was decided that you were the one to be brought here to be safe, and to protect Wonderland, and that is that."

Alice seemed to consider this, and nodded thoughtfully.

Shikamaru was pretty sure he could feel his mind exploding, and by the look on the Hokage's face, he felt he wasn't the only one.

"Did you have another question Tsunade?" Nekobaa asked, in an abrupt subject change.

The Godaime closed, and then opened, and then closed her mouth, before asking in an oddly strained voice, "So why is Alice in _Konoha_ exactly?"

Nekobaa sighed. "The reason she had to come to Konoha now was that she is the last of her line, and it was no longer safe for her in London." She turned to look at Alice. "I know you only did what you felt necessary against Bumby, but someone saw and told, and I managed to get you out of there only minutes before the coppers would have been busting your door in, to put you away for murder."

Alice's eyes hardened, but she merely inclined her head.

"Wait a moment," said Shikamaru, seizing upon a detail that he _could_ wrap his mind around, "you said 'the reason she had to come to Konoha _now_'. Do you mean to say that she was always supposed to come?"

Nekobaa nodded and sighed. "Well, the thing is, like I said, she's the last of her line. Konoha has always fostered the strongest genjutsu bloodlines of the nations, most specifically with the Uchiha Sharingan, and the Kurama Reality Bending." Nekobaa sighed. "But unfortunately, though it was decreed that this was the dimension that would foster Alice, we screwed up. We thought that this year would be a good year to bring her, when the prophesized strongest heir to the Uchiha was going to be of age, but the demon who told us the prophesy forgot to mention a few things, like oh, the strongest ever heir to the Uchiha was going to _kill every member of his family but his brother and go missing nin_." Nekobaa hissed in frustration. "We had originally hoped that the Kurama might provide an alternate candidate, but they've proven too weak for their genjutsu, and the only strong illusionist they have in this generation is not only female, but Alice's yang, and even madder than she is."

Alice folded her arms defensively in front of herself.

Nekobaa waved her hand dismissively. "Alice, your problem was that you always saw too much and in your heart of hearts refused to believe the delusion that it had been you or Dinah your cat who burned your parents and sister to death. Yakumo burned her parents to death in a fit of childish rage and then repressed the memory, decided it was the Sandaime Hokage's fault, and then attacked most of Konoha. You might have invented another personality through the Red Queen, but at least you never let her have control, unlike Yakumo with her Ido. And besides," Nekobaa sighed, "Alice's grandmother was a Kurama, so there might be some slight inbreeding effects."

Alice's arms remained folded in front of her, but her expression faded from defensive to inscrutable.

"So, anyway, that killed off the plan that we had considered of seeing if we couldn't foster an incredibly powerful bloodline of illusionists who could have ridiculously amounts of plot-armour in exchange for keeping the Anthropomorphic Creatures' homeland, Wonderland safe in minds, but someone somewhere decided that that sort of Mary Sueism was to be frowned upon, so the plan to put Alice in a dimension where Itachi _didn't_ kill his family was quashed before we could get a writer onto it, so we had to go for Plan B."

Tsunade, with an incredulous expression that revealed that she _knew_ she was going to regret asking, asked the obvious question, "So what is Plan B."

Nekobaa smiled, like the cat that got the canary. "Plan B is, we create a feedback loop. Alice becomes legendary in Konoha, and people start to tell stories about her. That means that Alice's existence will receive better support, which means that Wonderland will be more stable, which means that the Summons will still be available. Konoha's genjutsu bloodlines means that her ability to affect reality around her will be explained as a genjutsu, so she's comprehensible here, and thus it is that people will be able to tell stories about this madwoman with incredible genjutsu powers, named Alice." Nekobaa grimaced. "We did try to start a storyline elsewhere, but most people who hear of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland tell it as a silly dream that a little girl had, which is why nothing makes sense in human terms. Not nearly enough people have the capacity to accept the existence of a world where the internal logic is inconsistent to the way most humans view such things."

There was a brief silence, as Nekobaa's words were absorbed, and then Shikamaru, glancing warily at Tsunade for permission, wondered, "And why do you assume that we're going to be telling stories about Alice?"

Nekobaa smirked, her ancient eyes crinkling with amusement. "She's already the talk of the town. Alice is far too bizarre in this reality to fade into the background. She won't be here for much longer though, because to best stabilise the feedback loop, she should be in another reality entirely. This is just a temporary measure, to make sure that everything is set." Nekobaa stretched in her chair. "It took a while, but we finally got everyone in place for the big finale."

Tsunade had a sudden realisation. "Wait, who is this _we_ you keep speaking of," she demanded.

"Phew," said Nekobaa, completely ignoring the Hokage's question. "That was exhausting. I'm going to go home and back to being a minor character now." And with that she took her cats with her and left.

There was a long, pregnant pause. The pause went into labour, and gave birth to a beautiful, dazzling confusion.

"Okay," said Tsunade in a dangerously calm voice. "Did anyone understand a word of that?"

Alice inclined her head, and Naruto raised his hand, uncharacteristically timidly.

"My mistake," said Tsunade. "Did anyone even remotely _sane_ understand any of that?"

Naruto exclaimed "Hey!" but otherwise no one reacted.

Tsunade finally gave into the urge that had been haunting her for days now, and hit her head against her desk.

"Fuck this. SHIZUNE!" she yelled suddenly.

"Yes Tsunade-sama?" Shizune poked her head through the doorway. "Are you ready for your three o'clock app-"

"Sake. Now." said Tsunade.

"But-" Shizune started to protest.

"Sake. Now." Tsunade's expression brooked no disagreement, and Shizune growled in frustration, but pulled out a small sake-bottle she had stashed in the pocket of her kimono.

"All of you but the Nara kid get the fuck out of my sight," Tsunade said.

"But-" Naruto and Shizune both started.

"OUT!"

Alice sniffed disdainfully. "No need to be rude," she said, before gliding out of the room. Chishiru sneered smugly at Tsunade and followed her.

Naruto and Shizune followed soon after them, the former chasing after Alice, and the latter looking concernedly over her shoulder at her boss.

The door shut solidly behind them.

"Take a seat, Shikamaru," Tsunade said.

Shikamaru took the seat recently vacated by Nekobaa, and pulled it in front of the Hokage's desk. He sat.

Wordlessly, Tsunade poured two saucers of sake, and pushed one in Shikamaru's direction.

They both downed the sake in one swallow.

"Kami on a fucking bicycle," Tsunade breathed, as Shikamaru coughed over the harsh liquor. "Nara, you're the only other arguably sane person who was there for that entire conversation. I need confirmation. That seriously just happened, didn't it."

Shikamaru nodded dumbly.

Tsunade growled, pouring herself more sake.

"Did you believe a word of that?" she asked him.

Shikamaru shook his head. "I can't," he said simply.

Tsunade nodded in understanding.

"We will never speak of that again," she decided, as she poured her subordinate another saucer.

Shikamaru nodded again, this time with more energy.

The two of them sipped sake in the companionable silence of people who have just suffered a trauma.

Finally Tsunade spoke again.

"Alright Nara," she said. "Tell me what the hell happened on your mission."

Internally breathing a sigh of relief at the return of normality, even as he almost groaned outwardly at the thought of explaining some of it, Shikamaru began to retell the events of his mission to Tsunade.

…...

_A/N:Pulls out umbrella_


	13. Chapter 13: A Long Awaited Tea Party

Chapter 13: A Long Awaited Tea Party

When Naruto woke up, the day after Sasuke had been retrieved, he wondered if the events of the past few days had been a dream.

He rolled out of bed, made himself some cup-ramen, and then made his way to the bridge where Team 7 usually met.

Upon getting there, he realised very quickly, that _no_, the last few days hadn't been a dream, because if they'd been a dream, then Kakashi wouldn't be at the bridge. On Time. Sakura wouldn't be crying.

Naruto felt awful. He had promised Sakura that he would get Sasuke back, but neither of them had ever considered that he would be held by T&I. Sakura started saying that there must have been some sort of mistake, but Kakashi had been quick to disabuse them of that notion, with a cold reminder of his motto.

Those that desert the mission are trash. Those that desert their team-mates are less than trash.

Then he added a rhetorical question that had not been part of that first lesson.

If those who desert their team-mates are less than trash, what does that make a person who deserts his entire Village?

Kakashi's tone, and words, had shocked Sakura into silence.

A Missing-nin. The lowest of the low. Konoha shinobi and kunoichi were taught from the first days of the academy that those who had deserted other villages were useful, if not to be trusted with anything important.

Those that deserted Konoha however...

The training session hadn't really improved from there, and eventually Kakashi had just told them both to go home.

Just before Kakashi had vanished into a shunshin however, Alice appeared in her usual swarm of butterflies.

Kakashi had been a little taken aback.

"Alice-san?"

Alice smiled serenely at him, and handed him an envelope with his name on it.

Then she turned to Naruto and did the same.

Then she turned to Sakura.

"I originally did not intend to invite you, but I decided that it would be impolite, since I am inviting your teacher and team-mate. And after my words of censure towards you, I decided that it would be for the best if I did not turn myself into a hypocrite." Alice then handed Sakura an envelope, and then turned on her heel and disappeared into another blue swarm.

Naruto looked down at his envelope, and slit it open with a kunai.

Considering what Alice had just said to Sakura, he guessed the contents, but even then, he was somewhat surprised to see the painstaking calligraphy on the floral-scented rice-paper. More to the point, he was confused as to why Alice had written the entire invitation in romaji_ (A/N: Roman alphabet) _instead of using kanji and hiragana, but in terms of Odd Things that Alice did, this barely rated on the scale.

"_Dear Uzumaki Naruto,_

_You are Cordially Invited to a Tea Party at the House of Alice Liddell. The Party will be Tomorrow at 4 o'clock Post Meridian. There will be Tea and Cakes and Eggs and Honey. Hats optional._

_Please RSVP before Tomorrow noon, and Bring Your Own Chair."_

"Bring your own chair?" Naruto looked up to see Sakura looking particularly bemused.

"Uh I guess she's still only got two?" Naruto suggested. He turned to look at Kakashi. "Are you going to be there Sensei?"

Kakashi eye smiled. "Iruka said he'd visit vengeance unspeakable upon me if I declined the invitation, so of course I'll be there."

He eye-smiled at the blank looks from both of his students, and before they could interrogate them, he did what he had planned on doing pre-Alice turning up and shunshined away.

AVAVAVAVAVAVAVA

The table was set, with several mis-matched tea-sets. If anyone had asked her, Alice would have been able to tell them that she had purchased them in six different bargain bins, and one junk store.

There was indeed cake, and eggs and honey. There was also pickled ginger, and cucumber sandwiches, and a plate of dango. And cup-ramen. Each arriving guest upon noticing this last inclusion had turned to stare incredulously at Naruto.

The fourth time this happened, Naruto, who since he lived upstairs was the first guest to arrive, demanded to know what the hell everybody's problem was. Unfortunately, the person he asked this was Aburame Mushimaru, who told Naruto bluntly and in as many words that he was a corrupting influence to people's good taste. Naruto wound up into a speech about how great ramen was, but Iruka, who had been the second person to arrive, quickly diverted his attention by asking him pointedly if he knew anything about the odd henge that Konohamaru and co. had been using lately.

Naruto scratched the back of his head and snickered sheepishly.

Iruka cracked his knuckles.

Alice asked Iruka if, since he was a teacher and all, he could answer for her how a raven was like a writing desk?

Tsubaki choked on her tea, causing much consternation to her co-worker.

It was an odd gathering.

One academy teacher, two interrogation specialists from T&I, one jinchuriki, one pink-haired genin, one one dimensional traveller.

And, at only twenty minutes late, one ex-ANBU cyclops. With a bright green plastic chair.

Alice fixed him with a severe glare.

Kakashi shrugged. "Sorry, but when I went to get a chair from my place, I remembered that I only have cushions. So I had to borrow this from this guy I know. And then he challenged me to a contest. And then..."

Alice waved him to a space between Iruka and the T&I duo.

"Well I am very pleased that you could come," she said politely.

She then re-posited her question to the party- "So can anyone tell me how a raven is like a writing-desk?"

This prompted the immediate question from Naruto, "what's a raven?"

To which Alice replied, "Together they are only an unkindness, though bigger than the members of a murder. Both are black and both are hoarse."

At that Iruka started. "Oh! You're talking about the old collective nouns. My mother once told me about those. The only ones that are really in common usage around here are a shadow of ninja and a conspiracy of politicians."

"Odd," said Alice, cocking her head. "That's the other thing that I've heard ravens called. I suppose both are ruthless scavengers."

Tsubaki, who hadn't been paying especial attention to Alice's last comment, exclaimed. "Oh yes, of course! That's why people thought it was so funny that Itachi started using that genjutsu where he turns into a group of crows..." she trailed off sheepishly as everyone but Mushimaru stared at her.

"Well, over at T&I we found it pretty funny," she muttered defensively. "You know, since..."

"So!" interrupted Kakashi brightly. "I have a riddle!"

After about an hour of this, Sakura made her excuses and stomped away. If anyone had cared to listen, they would have heard her mumbling under her breath, "Well that was the silliest tea party I ever went to! I am never going back there again!"

The rest of the party-goers stayed. Naruto, because he had nothing better to do. Kakashi didn't want Iruka to wreak vengeance on him. Iruka stayed because he thought it important that someone sane kept an eye on proceedings (and in his humble opinion there was no such thing as a sane jonin. There was a reason he kept refusing the promotion after all. Tsubaki and Mushimaru were attempting to covertly information gather, but were also getting endless amounts of entertainment watching Iruka and Kakashi squirm.

Alice on the other hand seemed distracted.

When dusk came, she paused, mid-pour of a fresh cup of tea, looking out the window.

"What? That light!?"

A strange whistling-humming noise could be heard, and the assembled ninja felt suddenly uneasy.

As though drawn by a mysterious force, Alice walked out the door.

The ninja followed her, and gasped.

A pure white, oddly-shaped light floated in the sky, and it appeared to be descending. The whistle-hum was getting louder.

Suddenly, Mushimaru gasped. "Is that...!?"

Eyes grew wide as a strange metallic vehicle floated to middle of the street and hit with a low thud that shook the ground and split the road surface.

Now that it was on the ground, the shinobi could see that it was vaguely saucer-shaped, with an up-turned glass bowl on top. The base of the saucer lifted with a strange hissing sound, and then suddenly bizarre figures stepped out.

They were about a foot taller than the average human man, and though they stood bipedally, it was clear that these... things were not human, by their unnaturally slim grey forms and great bulbous heads with two black oval eyes each as big as a child's face. They spoke using sounds that hurt Kakashi's ears, in a dialect so strange that individual syllables were impossible to pick out, let alone intonation or words... without mouths. The senior ninja subtly checked for genjutsu, but none of their "Kai"s or surreptitious self-stabbings with senbon or kunai changed the scene in front of them.

The ninja had immediately moved to stand in defensive stances, but to their consternation, Alice stepped forward.

"'Into the hole again, we hurried along our way, into a once-glorious garden now steeped in dark decay,'" she said in tones that made it clear she was quoting something.

"The dimensions of this desolate tract unknown to all but the inhabitants. Only one path will bring you to the endgame. Look straight ahead. Or askance – whichever way you choose, you must always look in the right direction," came a dark voice.

The ninja snapped their heads around, to see that Chishiru, Alice's Cat summon had appeared.

"Will you follow me Cheshire?" Alice asked him, looking directly at the bizarre beings.

"I'm not a dog," Chishiru snorted.

Alice nodded, and said no more, stepping forward towards the grey creatures.

They cocked their bulbous heads, as though considering her, and emitted more strange sounds, before flanking her and guiding her into the strange metal structure.

"Hey!" Naruto ran a few steps forward, but suddenly one of the beings wheeled around, and a metallic object grasped in his hands sent out a burst of energy that dropped the jinchuriki in his tracks. The remaining ninja, stopped in their tracks as they realised that each of the beings carried one of the weird blasting devices, and that they were all pointed at them.

Alice merely clicked her tongue in faint reprimand, folding her arms and glaring at the odd beings.

She then turned to the ninja and said merely, "I fear nothing."

Before anyone else could register their protests, Alice had been escorted into the metal... thing and the grey beings had followed her.

Moments later, the ululating whistle-hum had returned, upon which moment the metal structure lifted up into the sky, and was soon a diminishing pinprick of light, indistinguishable from the stars just starting to come out.

Kakashi could have sworn he saw Alice wave to him through the glass dome just before the machine was too far away to see.

Naruto groaned from his position on the ground, and Kakashi flash-stepped to his student's side.

"Still alive?" he asked.

Naruto rubbed at his stomach. "That stung. Felt like getting hit by a lightning-jutsu."

He turned to the Cat, who was idly licking one paw.

"What the hell, Cat? What were those things? Demons? Why did they take Alice?" Naruto demanded.

The Cat just sneered.

"Every picture tells a story. Sometimes we don't like the ending. Sometimes we don't _understand_ it."

And then he faded away.

The ninja looked at each other in consternation. Naruto said what everyone else was thinking.

"What the fuck!?"

…...

_A/N: Well, that's all folks. _

_No seriously. That's it. You can all go home now. Oh wait. Most of you are probably already at home. Or reading at this at work, in which case I will wag my finger at you. wags finger_

_Thanks for reading. I did appreciate the reviews, good and bad, but especially the constructive ones. You should know who you are. You usually wrote me more than a sentence :P. I'd also like to take this moment to thank everyone who put this in their C2s, or recommended it via forums. _

_And now for the bit you've probably been waiting for._

_So. Chapter 12. _

_Some of you hated it. Some of you loved it. Some of you were just really bewildered by it._

_I make no apologies._

_Frankly, I decided that writing this fic was something that had got old and tired for me. It's been almost two years now after all, and I'd run out of (good) ideas for it. It nearly went into a particularly stupid arc where it became Alice/Itachi, but I decided that was the dumbest idea I'd ever had, so I never even wrote the first sentence of it. There were a few one-shot jokes left in my head, but for the most part I felt like this had gone as far as it was ever going to go._

_So I figured I had 2 options. I could take it out with a bang, or with a fizzle._

_So I had a few drinks, and picked "bang". This has been mostly successful, because my inbox is now full of various expressions of "what the fuck just happened?!" Some of you even thought it was great, which made _me_ ask "what the fuck just happened!?" so maybe it was completely successful after all. It felt like it was in the spirit of this fic, so I did it, spreading confusion. Whether it's the stupidest call I've ever made is besides the point. I made it, and so it is done, and whilst I could delete it, I won't, because there needed to be _something_ in between chapters 11 and 13._

_Chapter 13 has been the planned ending for the last 6 months. I could have left Alice in Konoha, but I decided not to, because settling down didn't really fit with her character IMO. Also because I really like the original Silent Hill UFO ending._

_As a further disclaimer to my original one: I own neither American McGee's Alice, nor Naruto, nor Silent Hill. Please support the official releases._

_If people want to write about the further adventures of Alice, then that's their call, but I'm officially done with this fic, almost certainly for good._

_It's been real._

_Later,_

_Erisah_


End file.
